I don't know how much it matters 10-15 years down the line, but it can matter very much 2-3 years later. I know people (mostly front-end developers and designers) that have been totally fine without a degree, but I personally have had a terrible experience.
My story: I dropped out of MIT to stay at my summer internship. However, the company tanked (this was at a finance company, summer of '08), and my team was pretty much disbanded, so I went looking for a new job. Luckily, one of my team members had just gone back to his old job where he was a manager, so he was able to vouch for my awesomeness and hire me (despite extreme reluctance -- I'd gotten told multiple times by both recruiters and other engineering folks that they wouldn't be able to hire me full-time).
Unfortunately, the company turned out to be a terrible place to work, so I quit after a couple months. And from then on out, I had a really difficult time getting a job. People would say they had a company policy saying they couldn't hire drop outs, but they'd love me as an intern, or they'd tell me point-blank that I had great technical skills, but they were worried about my ability to "commit".
After all, I was a fresh young kid with very few connections, so it'd always be some clueless recruiter deciding whether to pass on my resume or not. Maybe your experience will be different if you have better connections or if you're the type of person who can network well.
Luckily, I have a great job now, but my experience was a big shock. I'd always thought that people in Silicon Valley didn't give a fuck about whether you had a degree or not, but this was definitely not true in my case.
My story: I dropped out of MIT to stay at my summer internship. However, the company tanked (this was at a finance company, summer of '08), and my team was pretty much disbanded, so I went looking for a new job. Luckily, one of my team members had just gone back to his old job where he was a manager, so he was able to vouch for my awesomeness and hire me (despite extreme reluctance -- I'd gotten told multiple times by both recruiters and other engineering folks that they wouldn't be able to hire me full-time).
Unfortunately, the company turned out to be a terrible place to work, so I quit after a couple months. And from then on out, I had a really difficult time getting a job. People would say they had a company policy saying they couldn't hire drop outs, but they'd love me as an intern, or they'd tell me point-blank that I had great technical skills, but they were worried about my ability to "commit".
After all, I was a fresh young kid with very few connections, so it'd always be some clueless recruiter deciding whether to pass on my resume or not. Maybe your experience will be different if you have better connections or if you're the type of person who can network well.
Luckily, I have a great job now, but my experience was a big shock. I'd always thought that people in Silicon Valley didn't give a fuck about whether you had a degree or not, but this was definitely not true in my case.