<i>there are a ton of talented software engineering candidates who have their “10,000 hours” of coding experience, but don’t have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. Many employers are overlooking these candidates to their detriment.</i><p>10k hours of real experience would equate to 5 years of professional programming and in my opinion would likely make one an intermediate programmer at least and likely make most education credentials moot.<p>This however is vastly different from the case of a kid programming from the age of 12 and then attending a bootcamp and claiming 10k hours of experience.<p>In that case, I would assume the candidate is likely to have no "real" experience in my opinion and I would not hire them over someone with a CS degree.<p>Yes I realize that there are plenty of counter examples of child prodigies but I sometimes need to review 100 applications a week and unless an application from a self taught programmer with bootcamp credentials and nothing else came with an impressive letter of recommendation, I would round file it.<p>However if an application came in from someone with 5 real years under their belt I could not care less what their educational background was.