6 hours ago, Fulcrum.013 said:

Im from Ukraine

For which I can clearly state that it's possible to get a work in industry without having a degree. I've done some business (and software development) for Israeli-based corporation. Their developer was from Ukraine and didn't have a degree.

It will always boil down to individuals, their skills, experience, will to work, etc.

37 minutes ago, jbadams said:

Please keep in mind that your personal experiences are not universally applicable, and that your personal opinions are just that; opinions rather than facts.

Ok. Let i told a story that not related to papers where degree specified but related to fundamental basis that university began to give from first day. Every year we have a competitions on sciences betwin secondary and high schools students. It have a different levels. First is school level, than a city level and so on. To pass a next level it required to take a required percent of points . On my last high school year on regional competitions by CS  has take a part approximately 35 persons of my year from region with total population over 7 millions.  From my 500k city it was 2 persons. Obviously it was a most smart and self motivated persons that really love a programing, becouse i has seen about anybody of them on previous year regional competitions and on regional competitions of school-boys made software that works in non-regulated production, so about anybody of competitors already has a real development expirience. Later about anybody of its 35 person became a top-level developers and scientists.  But on competition we have a 2 tasks. One of its tasks nobody of competitors has not been able to solve. Just becouse it involve math that not studied on high school. On 2-nd university month any of university students has been able to solve it task just in one line of code.  And it not enought to just google a solution becouse it comes from properties of cross production, so to use it in wide range of similar task required to understend its properties inuitively. And its just a basics that university give on first month.

With more complexive theories  situation of cource much harder. Where a very smart and expirienced "programmer" ever dont know what branch of math and  other theories to explore, just enought educated programmer instantly see wich same mathematical tools required to solve task.

That story shows that education and specific knowledge is required to solve certain tasks, it has absolutely nothing to do with degrees.  While it may have been true that none of the non-university students undertaking it solved the problem in that case, there's no reason someone might not have undertaken that study at home and therefore been able to study it without a degree qualification.

More importantly, however, it bears no strong relation to the topic at hand: whether or not a degree makes you more employable.  It's apparent from many of your posts that you have strong feelings about education and qualification within the field, but I will remind you again that those are just that: your opinions.  Regardless of any argument you might put forward in support of getting a degree, the simple reality is that in much of the world having an established work history is valued more highly, and if you've managed to land a first job and perform it to a basic level of competence a degree may not be required to find subsequent work, achieve promotions, etc.

To be absolutely clear, I actually agree that formal education can be beneficial and that people will often learn things they may not have been exposed to elsewhere -- but keep in mind the question that we're actually responding to. when judging the importance of that opinion.

35 minutes ago, Vilem Otte said:

Their developer was from Ukraine and didn't have a degree.

Of cource uneducated developers trying to work for foreigin countries where is no demands to degree, also local web-dev companies that on most works for foreigen clients ever prefer to hire uneducaded developers, just becouse educated ones dont want to works with garbage codebase that its companies have and antiscientific "methodologies" like scrum/agile. Really it "companies" able to make a simple landing page or customize/configure  ready web-shop scripts. But with little bit complexive tasks thay anytime fail.

11 minutes ago, jbadams said:

there's no reason someone might not have undertaken that study at home and therefore been able to study it without a degree qualification.

Related to software development required qualification obviously can not be ontained without everyday home studing together with university classes. Really it possible here to study complete at home, then come to university, pass all required exams and got a diploma. But latest known person that has really done it was a Granfather Lenin into 19 century. Also from soviet time we have a homestudy form of education, on wich students takes a homeworks and list of required textbooks  from professors and then pass exams together with fulltime students. Its kind of students usually have so low level of knowledege and skills that IT-related branch have no it form of education at all. Really it clearly shown by rules to enter a university. It is set of exams for each faculty, person who not get a minimum points required for each exam not pass at all. Other persons have a competition of points to get a government paid education and scholarship. It approximately 2/3 of places into the classrooms. Other 1/3 places taken by students that paid for education themself or have a company that paid for his education and want to employee it student after finish of education. Its students pass without competition of points, just required to have a pass quantity of points on each exam. Same competition for government paid places on homestudy classes. So obviously by its system persons that study fulltime most skilled and have a top level of prerequired knowledge to get in profession, "homestudents" have a lowest possible do get in profession level of knowledge, and person who has not got to a university have no prerequired knowledge and skills at all.

Really i know many guys that not a educated programmers but is a successfull self-employed web-developers. But anybody of them have a analogical to Master degree into other, not related to IT engineering field (like machinery building and so on) and perform only simpliest works.

11 minutes ago, Fulcrum.013 said:

Really it possible here to study complete at home, then come to university, pass all required exams and got a diploma.

You're too fixated on getting the piece of paper -- that's not what I was talking about in the section of text you quoted and responding to.  I'm talking about people studying at home with no intention of getting a qualification.  Whilst not everyone chooses to do so, that's something that's becoming increasingly easy to do and which a lot of people do choose to do.

Yes, there are benefits to formal education, but talking specifically about one of those benefits -- exposure to topics you may not otherwise be familiar with --  it is entirely possible to gain that benefit without ever getting a degree.  A growing number of degree level courses have made their learning materials freely available online, making this easier than it has ever been.

I'm not saying properly qualified developers aren't often more capable than those without formal training, or that there aren't often problems with the code written by those developers -- hell, a lot of formally trained and qualified developers also produce terrible code -- but I am saying that isn't necessarily important to the question at hand.

Let me separate this from the rest of the text and make it bold so that it stands out for you.

Your opinion of formal education and qualifications is just an opinion and doesn't necessarily relate to the original poster's employability.  All the examples and arguments in the world will not change that.  Continuing to give more examples, therefore, isn't really taking the conversation in a useful direction.

26 minutes ago, Greedy Goblin said:

yet I wonder how relevant that 20 year old knowledge is today

Math can not be outdated. And it is main tool of programmers. It required to get in to task field that for most tasks especially related to gamedev (same as for FA/CADs and many other fields) described by sets of differential equations.  Anything else not so significnt but sometime very helpfull. For example now i have a more CPU chahe than has a RAM when began, and much more ram than was HDD capacity on my first PC. So obviuosly it much easy to make complexive simulations realtime. Really scrolling of screen and ever 3D rendering nowadays dont require to be completely made on assembler to work smothly, so it much simple now than has been on my studing years. C++ that i use has only minor (yet) but very helpfull on some cases changes during its years, that allow to make code much shorter and  reliable (really online members initializations, constexpr and type-traits intrisics has make many triks muck simple and better readable ). So anything become a much easy, much closer to pure math. Really it was a very tricky to implement ever a basic  software 3D render on 33MHz hardware where a ever integer multiplication has take 2*n cycles where n is a multiplier in comparsion with modern hardware that able to produce a matrices in just a 4 cycles on 3.3GHz CPU.

3 hours ago, Greedy Goblin said:

It sounds pretty tough to be a software developer in Ukraine

I guess it same tough to be a serious software developer anywere.  Just assume that you have no option to google or take way to solution of your tasks from textbooks. Just becouse it just no texbooks exists or its don't describe a field such dipper and have only common recomendations that clear without its textbook . Only option that you have is to "drill" a field yourself using a fundamental basis that you have as your tool to find way for solution. Obviuosly well-organized by university basis will serve you much better then not linked mosaic of partial knowledge that is usuall result of self education. By the way it wery clear seen on tasks that exids university studied level of sciences, where parts found in result of "drilling" appear as pieces of mosaic that have to be assembled together. In case you tools to drill is a same unlinked mosaic it usually just imposible to find a solution by other way than anciently. 

Obviuosly self-"education" for software developers can not have a same quality as  university education. Becouse university shows a scientific proven theories but ommit a tons of fashioned useless garbage that overflow a youtube and other resources.

Really i never seen self-"educated" developers that understand such basic tools like surface coords or gradient search method, or just ever heart about such common-usage tools as concept of superposition or PID-regulation (while it a plenty of people with university education in other fields that understend and able to use its tools very well). But i seen a plenty of garbage code from self-"educated" smat-guys that very smarty converts O(N^1.5) non partiation optimized problem to O(2*n^2) into his "gurus masterclasses". And seen a plenty of project managers that asking advice how to get working a 300k lines "masterpieces" from  "good expirenced" guys for set of specific-case solution where 10k of lines enought for universal solution.

3 hours ago, jbadams said:

Your opinion of formal education and qualifications is just an opinion and doesn't necessarily relate to the original poster's employability.

Really employment today is not a warranty of employment tomorrow. Especially on such overheated marked as AAA gamedev nowadays. Just look to last year stats. Most of AAA has spend for advertismenst 2x more budgets than for development. Its mean that it bubble pumped increasing quantity (and quantity of unqualified developers too), withoud increasing of product quality. Shortly it bubble will  blow up, and compaines that prefer to increase a number of developers instead to increase a depth of code abstractions will  have no chances to survive on market, becouse by its way thay have a exponential growth of complexity with linear growth of quantity, and no growth of quality at all.  It just will collapse like a dot.coms at later of 90-x. So it can be only recomendation to keep a position on it blowup - have a university education and not work for company that hire software developers without university education.

Same thing will happend on web-dev field, but it will happend due to new web technology that will able to use same tools of rapid apps development that nowaday used for desktop interface building and data binding for both web and desktop.

3 hours ago, jbadams said:

You're too fixated on getting the piece of paper

I fixed on meet a requirments for software developers qualification and on nothing else. Really i never seen a self-"educated" "developers" that able to understand a complite ready mathematical description of ever basic tasks for most fields related for gamedev such as proportional navigation, collision prediction and so on. As result thay unable to developt and debug a robust software at all and can get something anciently only by non optimul and much complexive ways. Obviuosly most of them just not qualified developers that unable to pass a university (and also goverment) exams for developers qualification.