This connects because I'm currently on the hiring side and I've also been on the candidate side. About ten years ago I got rejected from a junior position because I didn't have a degree - I was self-taught and already freelancing successfully, but apparently that didn't matter.

Now I'm the hiring manager and I've literally removed degree requirements from every role I've helped post. We've hired four people without degrees in the past two years and they're honestly some of our best performers. One of them came from a bootcamp, one taught themselves, two started in support roles and moved up.

But here's what I've learned: removing the requirement isn't enough. You also have to actively look for candidates without degrees. The default assumption is still that they'll have them, so if you just remove the requirement and wait, you'll still mostly get applications from people who went to college. You have to change how you source.

We started recruiting from bootcamps. We started asking for GitHub profiles instead of (or in addition to) work history. We started creating internal pathways for people to move into tech from adjacent roles. That's the part that actually takes work.

The other thing - and you mentioned this - is that this can't just be on individual hiring managers to fix. Your company's HR practices, your career level requirements, your recruiting partnerships, your internship programs... all of that has to shift. If you're alone in your team wanting to hire differently, it's exhausting and it doesn't scale.

Been in tech for 25 years and I've seen this pendulum swing back and forth so many times. In the '90s nobody cared about credentials - we hired on vibe and demo-ability. Then we got burned a few times, overbuilt some architecture, and suddenly everyone wanted formal education. Now we're swinging back to 'credentials don't matter.'

Here's my take: credentials have never been about what you learned. They're never been about whether you'll be good at the job. They're a class marker and a risk reduction strategy and a proxy for 'this person will probably understand how to work in a structured environment.' That's all. It's not actually measuring job readiness.

But the thing about your original post that I think is worth interrogating is whether you actually want to hire people without degrees, or whether you want to feel like you want to. Because hiring is still ultimately about risk and certainty. Every hire is a gamble. Your brain is looking for reasons to trust the person. A degree is one reason. It's not a good reason, but it's *a* reason. When you remove it, you need to replace it with something that gives you the same feeling of certainty - even if it's also not actually predictive.

Portfolios work great if they exist. They don't always. Some brilliant engineers have nothing to show because they worked in private codebases, or because they're new, or because they haven't thought about self-promotion. So what then?

I think the answer is accepting more uncertainty in hiring. Just... actually accepting it, not pretending you are while you optimize for credentials. That's harder than it sounds because it means being okay with occasional mistakes.

This hits different when you're the one on the other side of it. I dropped out of community college for financial reasons and taught myself to code. Built a portfolio over two years. Applied to probably 200 junior positions. Got rejected by almost all of them in the automated screening phase - I assume because I checked 'no' on the degree field.

Eventually got rejected so many times that I lied on an application. Put 'B.S. in Computer Science, [State University]' and suddenly I was getting interviews. Didn't change my portfolio. Didn't change my skills. Got an offer the third interview.

I took it. I've been at the company three years now, I'm mid-level, I've led migrations, I mentored interns. No one has ever verified my degree. I've told my current manager the truth and they said 'honestly, I don't care, your work speaks for itself.'

But here's what grinds me: I shouldn't have had to lie to get the chance to prove myself. And tons of people don't lie - they just give up. How many talented people are out there right now thinking tech isn't for them because they couldn't get past the filter? That's not a credential problem. That's a values problem.

I get what you're saying about class bias, and that's real, but I think you're glossing over something important: degrees often signal something that portfolios don't, which is that someone can commit to a long-term, difficult project and see it through. That's not nothing. I'm not saying it's predictive of job performance - I agree it's probably not - but it's a signal about discipline and delayed gratification.

Also, the 'class and access' argument cuts both ways. Yes, wealthy people are more likely to have degrees. But they're also more likely to have the flexibility to build impressive portfolios while job searching. If you're working a survival job with unpredictable hours, building a portfolio is harder. So if we move entirely to portfolio-based hiring, does that actually help people with fewer resources, or does it just privilege people with time and existing knowledge to produce polished work?

I think the real answer is that no single signal is enough. You need multiple signals. Some people will come with degrees, some with portfolios, some with work experience. You evaluate the combination and what's relevant to the actual job. The problem isn't that credentials matter - it's that we've made them the only thing that matters, or we've made them matter for jobs where they shouldn't.

So I'm with you on fixing the degree-worship. But I'm skeptical that portfolios are the magical alternative. They're just a different filter that advantages different people.

Okay but you're not wrong and you know you're not wrong, so what do you actually want here? Recognition that the system is broken? You already have that from a lot of people. Permission to not use the filter? You can do that unilaterally in your own hiring process.

I'm asking - because I see a lot of hot takes about credential bias from people in positions to actually change it, and they don't. They continue hiring the same way, maybe they hire one non-degree person as a token, and then they write essays about how the system is broken.

You say you've pushed back internally. Great. What happened? Did you implement alternative screening? Did you measure outcomes? Did you actually hire differently, or did you push back once, get resistance, and then just keep doing the same thing?

Because the thing is, if someone in a hiring position actually cared enough, they could start changing it immediately. They could start a pilot. They could take on some of the screening burden themselves. They could advocate loudly enough that it becomes someone else's problem to explain why they're not doing it.

So either the status quo is more convenient than you're saying, or you're looking for validation instead of a reason to actually change something. Maybe both.