There are some places that are just snobby about degrees - I know I wouldn't have been hired at the first place I worked without a degree of some kind. Other places wouldn't look at me because I didn't have a Masters.
But things have changed. There's much more emphasis now on what you can do, rather than what you've learned.
Since then, I've worked with all kinds of people and I've found that a degree has no bearing on the effectiveness of a programmer.
Self-taught people sure don't have the same background in algorithms and data structures as grads, but the good ones quickly find out when a particular algo/data structure is required, and then how to use it.