I am a coder without a degree and have not received negative feedback from companies that I have applied to, though I have not been at it for very long. No one

I am a coder without a degree and have not received negative feedback from companies that I have applied to, though I have not been at it for very long. No one has asked about a degree or what I did instead of going to college or why. That is, until today - and I am glad it came up. I had been corresponding with a recruiter for a government job (TTS) and after exchanging a handful of emails over the course of two days and scheduling a meeting she finally looked at my resume (which I sent with my first email), told me that I am not qualified and cancelled our meeting. I have a feeling that this job would have been a nightmare. As Eugene McCarthy said, "The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency." I have spoken to some highly insightful people during interviews this week and they generally seem focused on my ability to do real work that produces real results. Most interviewers seem to want to cut through the hiring pretense and get to looking at and talking about my code while assessing my communication skills. It has largely been a positive experience. This application for a job with the TTS may have been my first interaction with a professional email-sender (aside from recruiter spam) and it was shockingly unproductive. The coworker who taught me the most about how to treat others with respect was a reformed convict who did six years for armed robbery. Some of the best communicators I have worked with barely spoke English. If someone told me that the best coder they know does not have a degree it would not surprise me at all.