Would you be happy to work with any and all your peers who have the same degree?

As much as I want to agree with you and I do in principle. My reason for not trusting a degree is because I've first-hand seen degrees being given out like candy. I've seen companies hire degreed individuals and then spend a year training them in a bootcamp before they're remotely productive.

I've seen individuals that can't speak English, can't spell, use punctuation and write a coherent sentence given a degree. I don't want to bring race into this, but it's very much an important issue here in South African universities: there is a huge shortage of black developers. So universities have immense pressure to rubber-stamp pass the black individuals lest they be seen as the "problem" or "racist".

> Why don't they judge me based on my 4 year long degree which is only done to rubber stamp that I can do the job.

If you spend enough time hiring you learn that a 4 year degree is a very poor signal for "can be a productive engineer". Communication, raw coding, and soft skills aside I'm still regularly shocked by how weak the CS skills of many fresh grads are, it seems a double digit percentage never really learn big O well enough to use it day to day. When you're paying big salaries you can't afford not to verify this stuff.

> Do you also expect a Med graduate to see some patients in the hospital for free before giving them a job?

I mean, this is literally a requirement for graduating most pre-med programs.

Getting more at your point - in many skilled white collar professions you need to take regular tests to maintain "certification". The bodies that issue these certifications are trusted enough to maintain standards that it's possible to get hired by maintaining the certification. SWEs have no similar institution, and given how fast the field moves it's not clear we're ready to establish one.

4 year degree unfortunately is basically a neutral signal. Maybe if it is top scores from a top tier CS college it might be enough to be a positive signal in itself.

Yeah.... are you forgetting about residency? Because that's basically the equivalent of having to do doctor level work at a drastically reduced compensation.

If the computer science industry was more well regulated along the lines of traditional engineering by requiring a PE exam, then we'd have to do less upfront whiteboarding and leetcode interviewing to verify that an applicants abilities actually reflect their academic credentials.