That said, it's much harder to get your foot in the door without a degree, even in the Bay Area. I had to go above-and-beyond to get my first job at a small startup (I created a program that used their API and was useful enough that I ended up continuing the work when they hired me). With my second job at Dropbox, the recruiter told me that they only reason they interviewed me was because I went to Recurse Center (which is a free programming retreat for programmers that also acts as a recruiting firm). Multiple companies have grilled me during interviews about why I dropped out, including Google.