I was surprised to see your comment. I do most of the initial interviews for engineering at Aha! and it is hard for me to imagine saying something like that. We certainly don’t limit our hiring people with a CS degree - and the fact that we did face to face interview with you, even though you don’t have a degree, is proof of that. Generally I am looking for people who are passionate about writing software, and it helps a lot if they have been active in open source. That shows an interest and ability to collaborate with is essential in a 100% remote team.

We do look for very strong computer science fundamentals when we interview. We are building software and it is much better when the energy goes into solving the ___domain specific aspects of the problem rather than basic data structures and algorithms. Some of the best people on our team don’t have college degrees. However they are intensely curious and always trying to understand how and why things work, and how to improve them. A few years of experience with tough problem solving and a desire to seek elegant solutions can be better than four years of formal education.