I graduated with an information systems degree about a decade ago, and no employer has ever given me any amount of money for that degree. I have never gotten a bonus or higher pay because of it. Now, I’m seeing so many videos on TikTok and reels lately of students who graduated with a computer science degree costing them upwards of 90K, And they are all packed any huge room with like 20 employers who are hiring for like 300 jobs but there’s like thousands of them…
So basically if you want a digital piece of paper that says you’re “educated”, you can pay $40000 > $350,000. But you’ll never get any amount of money for it from employers, it won’t help you find a job. It’s a myth
The system has a lot of problems for sure, but IME as a senior software engineer, people without degrees are often lacking in core CS skills and are much less comfortable with the more conceptual aspects of the field like graph theory, systems design, DSLs, etc. Usually database skills aren’t quite as strong either due to not having studied relational algebra and other database concepts.
None of this is to say that someone without a degree can’t be a valuable part of the team, but at the higher levels of seniority, you do want people who have really strong foundations so you can ensure that you actually are building strong foundations. A degree doesn’t guarantee these qualities, but it certainly makes a person much more likely to have them. Not saying someone without a degree can’t possibly achieve this on their own, but it’s quite rare and requires much more self study than most actually do.
I would say that in most cases a person’s commitment to continuous education is more important than what they went to school a decade+ ago. There have been plenty of SWEs that I’ve run into with relevant degrees that never bothered to study since getting their degree and most of them were mediocre at best.