I recently applied for a developer position at some company and the hiring manager was surprised I don't have formal university education despite me showing them that I can code (with examples) and showing them PRs to existing open source projects.
He told me “We had a lot of good programmers without formal education that knew a lot, just like you, but we, yeah, you know…”
So they got fired because they didn't have formal education but they were good at what they were doing.
He also told me that because I don't have a formal education “There would be no place to go at this company” and that “You can only work as a technician with no CS background”.
I told him that I have the skills to work as a programmer and “climbing the corporate ladder” is not something that interest me, in fact, I told him that I got offers for higher positions in the past and I declined them because they would demotivate me.
I understand formal education is important but this condescending attitude from hiring managers against self-taught developers is uncalled for.
Makes me think that this kind of company is not the place I want to work for anyway, because it sounds like they don't value experience.