Facebook, Google, and Twitter certainly hire/make offers to hire individuals without degree. I know folks that are greatly respected at all three that fit that bill: Wayne Rosing is a famous example. These companies also can't afford to make hiring mistakes and have an extremely high bar.
That said, a Computer Science education certainly improves your chance of getting past the hiring bar. To most it means an exposure to topics they learn about had they spent the four years doing web development: what Bryan called "how computers work" (operating systems, CPU architecture, concurrency), algorithms and data structures beyond arrays and hash tables, and advanced topics (distributed systems, machine learning).
On the other hand, if you've spent those four years contributing to FreeBSD, doing game development (and here I mean doing AI and graphics yourself), or working on another technically challenging project such as a web browser or a compiler, it would be a different story.
I have an MS in CSE but from not from a nationally recognized top-tier school. I think I've done reasonably okay as far as professional success goes, but if I had to do it all over again, I'd have transfered to UC Berkeley (or another top CS school) when I had the chance, even if it meant delaying entering the work force by 1-2 years.
That said, a Computer Science education certainly improves your chance of getting past the hiring bar. To most it means an exposure to topics they learn about had they spent the four years doing web development: what Bryan called "how computers work" (operating systems, CPU architecture, concurrency), algorithms and data structures beyond arrays and hash tables, and advanced topics (distributed systems, machine learning).
On the other hand, if you've spent those four years contributing to FreeBSD, doing game development (and here I mean doing AI and graphics yourself), or working on another technically challenging project such as a web browser or a compiler, it would be a different story.
I have an MS in CSE but from not from a nationally recognized top-tier school. I think I've done reasonably okay as far as professional success goes, but if I had to do it all over again, I'd have transfered to UC Berkeley (or another top CS school) when I had the chance, even if it meant delaying entering the work force by 1-2 years.