In my experience hiring software engineers, possession of an undergrad CS degree was not a helpful filter for resumes. I did find that candidates with advanced

In my experience hiring software engineers, possession of an undergrad CS degree was not a helpful filter for resumes. I did find that candidates with advanced degrees or undergrad EECS degrees tended to be a little bit stronger than the average candidate. So did candidates with unrelated undergrad degrees, and a few years of job experience. I never figured out how to look at a resume and meaningfully select for extremely good hackers who were within our ability to attract (although it was easy to identify them in interviews). The ones for whom that was obvious from their resume had better opportunities. One thing that I find interesting about this conversation is how much more often it comes up in software than elsewhere. Why are there so many autodidact hackers out there? I think it might be that computers are such excellent, affordable learning environments. The quick feedback loop you can get actually working with a computer is unlike anything available for most fields. On the other side, academic CS programs are relatively new, and possibly don't do such a great job yet. Or maybe it's just that they've been attracting large numbers of the wrong people in recent years.