It really depended on demonstrable experience more than anything. The problem was that for awhile after the bust you could only get jobs if you were senior, an

It really depended on demonstrable experience more than anything. The problem was that for awhile after the bust you could only get jobs if you were senior, and even then you might be taking junior/intermediate jobs (and pay) even though you had senior experience. If you were intermediate + a degree, you might make it over the line, but intermediate and no degree, or junior and no degree, not so much. But honestly, the biggest selector there was still your resume. So yeah, there was definitely a shakeout, but it mostly involved that boom of people who'd joined between, say, 1999 and 2001 and didn't have any significant credentials, learned OTJ or otherwise. If you had at least four or five years under your belt and a "Sr. *" on your resume you were much more likely to survive the bust. There were also a burst of companies around then (Google primarily, and a bunch of follow-ons) that heavily selected on college graduates, and those from the Stanford+Ivy set. That loosened up relatively quickly, though, and if you knew someone internal and could get past the recruiters and had a good resume, you could still overcome that. I do think the next time a bust comes around, Github portfolios will probably mitigate some of the education issue. The point is to make it clear you're the best bet of the bunch, no matter what the context is. (edit: typos)