I think now it's dumb to hire someone based on it - no diss to Cardine and very interesting to see you look at it that much. It can be hit or miss on either end. Maybe it's just different in the computer science arena. I would say though that there is lots of amazing talent in programming/dev that never entered a classroom - does that make them a good employee? Again, something I'm ignorant on for computer programming.
Well I myself am a college dropout (well technically an extended leave of absence) so I definitely don't think a degree is a requirement to be successful at life.
I will say that I think most of the software that gets written in the internet marketing world is fairly simple, which allows for an average developer to look really smart. I think for more complicated projects, the skill difference between your average self taught developer and your average developer with a CS major from a top university becomes much more apparent.
For instance certain parts of how WordAi learns are based on algorithms that would require an understanding of fairly basic math concepts like partial derivatives and matrix algebra (as well as some concepts more complicated than that). But many self taught programmers would struggle to even conceptualize those topics because they lack the math background. When keeping up with the most cutting edge artificial intelligence work, you see math equations just as often as you see code, and a CS degree prepares you for that.
A good example of this is
Renaissance Technologies, which uses complex mathematical models and artificial intelligence to manage their hedge funds. Over one third of their employees have Ph.D.'s because the concepts are so complicated.
Although we are not quite at the level of Renaissance, I very purposefully try to create products like this, because I know that this effectively limits the number of people who can compete with me. It creates very large barriers to entry where a large percentage of self taught developers simply do not have the background required to compete.
Now of course with that being said there is the occasional incredibly good completely self taught programmer, but the signal to noise ratio for hiring people without a degree can be very bad. There was someone recently on this forum who ran into that issue where they posted a programming job, explicitly didn't require a CS degree, and they got a horde of completely unqualified applications. For people with a CS degree you can assume a certain level of qualification because the CS programs they are in are so hard that anyone who wasn't really good would be forced to switch their major because they wouldn't be able to keep up.
