fill the hole with the best that they can easily ascertain. I as an employer and employee of other organizations in the past - I can tell you that filling the

fill the hole with the best that they can easily ascertain. I as an employer and employee of other organizations in the past - I can tell you that filling the hole with what is available lowers standards. While this does happen, it is not something to aspire too. I can tell you from doing hiring in the past that people have gotten very good at filling their resume's with bullshit. I agree. But how is this relevant to our discussion. I have not said that the resume is a criteria. The last time I hired someone for a Senior Developer position, I had to filter through almost 500 resume submissions. Of those, I did a telephone technical interview with about 200 applicants. We did face to face interviews with the 6 applicants who passed an incredibly simple technical interview - Things that any programmer who has done any real work would almost be insulted by. Apparently, your filters arent effective. Any available filter to help sort the wheat from the chaff is helpful, and a degree is one of those filters. A degree may be one of those ineffective filters that you are already using. Perhaps it is just a segmentation factor like gender or age. If all one seeks to do is reduce the number of resumes/candidates one has to meet, then one might as well use gender or age or anything else. That being said, I do not have a degree in anything, I got into the industry at 17 and haven't had time to go to school. But, I've been able to get far by working harder than everyone else; in the conversation of degrees making a difference, I'd like to have one, sure. But I've never needed one. I think it's come up in one interview once, and it ended up being a nonpoint. And see you turned out to be alright :)