If they don't have a degree that means they've learned something without being forced to, they love the subject and are genuinely interested.
And by the way, if you're part of the 9 in 10 developers who don't have a degree and aren't cut out for development then your resume won't even make it to my desk, that's what the recruiters filter out.
All of that being said I'm not sure who you worked for but sorting through 100 resumes seems like a colossal waste of time. Lifehack: Just tell the recruitment firm "Give Me Your Top 5" and that's that.
You're right. The filtering is/was done by recruiting, but I had some insight into their general content. And yes, education is almost never at the top for senior positions. At that point it is mostly irrelevant.
My comment was a response to OPs statement that 100% of non-degreed candidates are better than those with degrees because they are more motivated. This is certainly not the case for entry level positions which is what I was referring to.
It seems like things are changing a bit, but back when I was in college in the late 80’s/early 90’s, this was almost everybody in the CS program. I don’t think I took a CS course with anybody who didn’t grow up banging on a C64 or Apple II or TRS-80 and hadn’t figured out quite a bit about software development concepts before they even learned algebra.
It does seem like the ubiquity of computers is changing this, though: computers are everywhere, but they’re so much more like consumer devices now that they’re paradoxically hard to figure out _how_ to program.