There's also a weird flip side to all these downsides. Once you establish yourself as competent there is this kind of threshold effect where not having a univer

There's also a weird flip side to all these downsides. Once you establish yourself as competent there is this kind of threshold effect where not having a university degree can suddenly start causing people to actually take you more seriously. This kind of countersignalling effect seems to be common when you do non-traditional things. I'm not sure this is a real thing unless you're, say, Richard Branson. I also can't really imagine many circumstances in which you're doing something non-traditional and you can't just pretend you don't have a degree by neglecting to mention it... and if you've already reached a level of "significance" in a non-traditional thing where someone might actually check, well, you've probably already done better than most.