I got my degree at 35 because of this. Not that I actually learned much of anything in the program, I was there purely for the paper.

This is where schools like WGU excel for those of us just seeking credentials for what we already know. The terms are six months, you can do as many courses as you want during that six months. Over half the courses are just a final exam. You take a pre-test on day one of the course. If you score high enough, you can take the final exam the same day and be done with the course. If one were very determined and knew most of the material going in, you could complete a BS in six months for a total cost of under $4000.

When I hired people at a former company, I secretly thought of job candidates like you as undervalued stocks. Just being honest, don't mean any disrespect — I mean undervalued in the sense of not being appreciated by other companies, not in how much we paid people.

I myself have degrees, but not in anything like software development, and I think engineers who don't have degrees but do exhibit all the other characteristics are just as talented, often more driven, practical, and reliable. Self-motivated, rather than something they fell into. Thinking of the five best engineers I've worked with, two of them didn't go to school at all, and two had degrees in things like music or political science. I've had poor experiences with people whose main qualification is an engineering diploma from a name brand school.

Of course there's a middle band in there where it gets more complicated, but generally I think smart, scrappy companies are eager to hire people like yourself, and I like working for that kind of company, personally.

A job opened on my team where I am working at as contractor. My boss told me to apply for the job.

I got an email back right away from HR stating that I didn't meet the requirements of having a degree.

Joke's on them, I already work there.

I hate to say this but you were probably an unfortunate bait for a labor certification of an existing employee on an h1b visa.

That is generally the only reason companies will stick to the bscs requirement. Normally if you have requisite experience the degree - especially bscs is not needed.

Hate to say it, but this is why I'm incredibly glad I didn't drop out of college even though I had a solid gig ready to go.

I knew I wasn't cut out for being an perpetual founder and that I'd definitely encounter greater challenges not having a degree than the challenges standing between me and my degree at that point in time. ($7k and 1 year of my life with classes I wasn't sure I could stomach).

Wish you the best, but for those considering this always assume you maybe aren't the best - think about what comforts you're giving up. I will say, anyone you talk to on the college / dropout risk/reward problem are highly biased. Dropouts who have achieved success are susceptible to survivorship bias and will vehemently tell you college isn't necessary. PHD's will always espouse college as the only route because they burned their entire 20's in college.

I completed my BSCS at a state school in my 30s after already being a freelance/amateur programmer for many years. I can honestly say I did not learn a single new thing about programming. In fact, almost every single bit of the programming I learned was completely wrong by todays standards, and rife with mistakes.

Yeah, that's a bummer. Statistically speaking you're better off finishing it if you want to maximize the number of places that would be willing to hire you. That said, it can also work in your favor not to finish since it might weed out companies you wouldn't want to work for anyway. I'll say anecdotally of the half dozen or so places I've worked and been involved in hiring software developers--a college degree would only be relevant if you had no other experience to speak of. When I look at a resume I'm looking for "stuff this person has done". Even for entry level, I'd rather talk about a hobby project they spent some legitimate time on that whatever a candidate did in college.

Larger places tend to have blanket requirements in part to protect themselves from hiring lawsuits, discrimination, etc.

I look at education when I hire but I’m more interested in experience and I never use a degree as a requirement. I am probably more likely to have the recruiter put the candidate into the pipeline if they have a CS degree but don’t have much experience or experience that doesn’t seem 100% relevant. But that’s not super common.

Whatever your opinion may be, degrees are often seen as a heuristic for "can complete a long, hefty commitment".

Check out uopeople.edu. you should be able to transfer most of credits and finish it off in your own time. If nothing else, to not have these stupid questions from hr