A brain, and the ability and willingness to learn. None of us really know what we're doing in this industry anyway, and you're constantly on the treadmill of l

A brain, and the ability and willingness to learn. None of us really know what we're doing in this industry anyway, and you're constantly on the treadmill of learning new things to keep up. Being able to effectively use the internet to search for information is a big deal. Honestly, it doesn't make a huge difference if they have a degree or not. Most universities don't teach much of anything that is particularly relevant to actual software development in their curricula. If the practices and technologies that are taught are only ten years out of date, that's cutting edge. You're going to be spending 3-6 months training up a junior developer before they are at all useful anyway. You just want to find the ones that will be continue to progress at the twelve month mark.