I'm self-taught. My first job I got lucky (or the grace of God, depending on your perspective). After that, it never mattered. I had experience, references, a track record.

And the older you get, the longer the track record, and the more it outweighs the piece of paper.

I'm primarily an embedded guy, though. If you're doing web apps, or desktop, or games, or phones, or high performance, or finance programming, your mileage may vary.

I'm happy to hear your success story but that has not been my experience. I am only able to get into FAANGs.

I'm sorry that that has been your experience. (Or maybe I shouldn't be sorry - FAANGs pay pretty well.) But what you say surprises me, for two reasons.

First, FAANGs get far more resumes than they have openings. Demanding a degree seems like an easy, lazy way to eliminate some. I'm kind of surprised that they don't take it. (I mean, they shouldn't take it, but I'm still kind of surprised.)

Second, many engineering organizations that are not FAANGs are trying to model their hiring on FAANG approaches. So I'm surprised that, if FAANGs would hire you, others won't - especially after you have experience at a FAANG.

Nobody cares about degrees much after you've started working.

Sure, there's very very big orgs where it matters for several positions, but it's not predominantly forbidden.

If this is true, we should keep these starred somewhere so self-taught devs don't have to waste time applying to orgs that care otherwise.

They won't pass the CV screening, so no big deal.