Yeah I actually work in a dev team where about half of us picked up programming outside of college. That includes our boss, who’s also the most technically proficient in my opinion. He went through a Microsoft-certified boot camp instead. Some of my uncles are engineers that had college paid for by their company, since they were already shown to be valuable workers without it.

I get the appeal of being able to just look for a candidate’s school instead of doing more heavy-lifting when evaluating a candidate, but the growing over-reliance is to everyone’s detriment. Companies will be missing out on some real talent, and qualified applicants have trouble getting the opportunity to prove themselves.