Speaking as someone who tries to elevate the careers of others based on their potential independent of their credentials… I think if you’re working with really

Speaking as someone who tries to elevate the careers of others based on their potential independent of their credentials… I think if you’re working with really advanced topics, the credentials start to be meaningless, because the important fact is whether a candidate can truly work with complex concepts/technologies. You expect the candidate to come in already knowing what they need, and you don’t need any assurance that they’re “trainable.” But for most of us here in the middle of the pack, the degree is more meaningful because it shows that at the very least, a candidate has been exposed to slightly higher-level concepts. As an example, when you’re trying to get someone to step up out of a help desk role into an analyst/developer role, that’s a lot easier to achieve with someone who’s had at least a degree’s worth of exposure to concepts of strategic thinking, lifecycle management, development methodologies, etc. Most of us don’t need to be passionate geniuses to do good work. For us non-geniuses, the conceptual “scaffolding” provided by academia opens up a lot of potential. I definitely believe that some people don’t need the degree, but they probably aren’t the average Joe.