I have met and worked with as many talented non-degreed SWEs as degreed. I number of years back I had posted a dev position where I specifically left off any degree requirements only to find HR had “helpfully” added a degree requirement to the posting.

At the time unemployment was low and the candidates I was getting were crap (but all well educated). I checked the post and realized a large portion of talented engineers were being excluded. Fixed the post and found a great candidate in short order.