Is a B.S. degree necessary for a software engineer?

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I understand your thinking but if you expect to be hired by a good company, you'll need a B.S. or better. Now, these people who have a two year degree "know people" in companies who get them these jobs. Some have been trained in the military. Usually, in good universities such as state universities or IVY League, the companies come "there" with their business cards and demos looking to hire fresh graduates who are keen to learn the industry. When you invest in your education, you get what you pay for. Not to be mean, but in general, when you say you hold a degree from a community college, people laugh behind your back, unless you're the CEO's nephew or something. I'm sorry but this is the reality when it comes to software engineering. Now, for health careers, especially hospital carreers such as untrasound tech, R.N., Mammogram tech, etc... you can get by with a two year degree "provided" you were trained at an accredited institution and have passed a state licensing exam. There's no licensing exam for software engineering. If you really can make it through, stay with it and at least get your four-year degree. If you get in with a good company, they just mght pay for your master's or even an MBA so you can apply for a managerial position in their own company.
My husband has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a Master's in Software Engineering. I'm getting this info straight from him. I'm just an R.N. with a two year degree. I hold a license and I have just under 30 years experience. I have NO use for a B.S. at this stage of the game. My husband worked for quite a number of yours as a consultant. There are consulting companies that hire 4 yr. degree holders and send them to companies to pick up what the regular employees can't or won't do. All of these companies require 4 year degrees. A company that brings in a consulatant gives them a lot of work experience and they pay very well but NO benefits because you not considered a permanent employee. You have to start somewhere but you will need 4 years. If you are given an opportunity to take electives, take only those that are for programming. BTDT said it right about that plane ticket. Even my husband who held a master's degree started out as a tester. Then he a junior programmer and now is a senior programmer/ developer. He's changed jobs six times in the last 20 years because of his inability to deal with office politics and didn't want to travel. He's purely technical and NOT social. Unfortunately, one can't put together two A.A. degrees and turn them into a B.S. That's just how it is. That even goes with nursing. I had an A.A. degree in general studies. I had no money. So, I worked as a waitress and put myself through a two year R.N. program but again it's the license that my employer looked at. It's not the same for the computer industry. If you want to be a developer, you will have to stick it out for 4 years.

I will concede that it probably depends somewhat on where you are. I am in New York and if you can't prove wizardry and don't have at a minimum a bachelors degree here, you are a one legged man in an ass kicking contest no matter what job you are applying to. In fact you are not going to get a job. This was less rigid 10 years ago as another observed and may be less rigid in some parts of the US. But why settle.

I disagree somewhat with the previous poster's information she got from her husband. It is possible to go far into the triple digits with no degree whatsoever (I have no degree and can easily make over $200k in any year even in this market), but interviewers are becoming extremely adept at asking challenging questions, these are usually divided into language riddles (are specializations of virtual methods in C++ virtual themselves? where is the vtable stored?) and logic riddles (how many ways to climb a ladder etc) and you need to be a top few % software engineer to get away with it. Further, you need to do it while making every one of the interviewers like you.

There are quite a few people working with me that do not have 4 year degrees and are software developers/engineers. However my company is mainly just grunt work on large pre-built web applications. If web applications are what you want to get into it's possible but not necessarily a good idea. I'm still catching up on algorithms and data structures as I got my 4 year degree in Math.

Think about how democratized programming, or other IT jobs are. Anyone at all can grab the tools necessary to do some freelance gig at little to no cost. There are many firms that just care about you working with new technologies and keeping up with the industry, and yes, it is true that you don't need a degree to do that.

But here's the thing: standards for small businesses have been getting lower while standards for big businesses have been getting higher. Without a degree, you have no reason outside of "practical experience" and a hopefully kick-ass portfolio to say you are better than a 14-year old that read a C++ tutorial (Get a degree). If a company is looking at applicants with a small enough budget, a junior programmer that will do the same job as a senior for less cash might win out. Also, that 14 year old might be working over the internet. With the net in the mix, you are competing against everyone else.

Pros want to regulate their own numbers, so they use degrees as a reason to leave more jobs than there are people to do them (Get a degree). They do this to protect their own income, and as horrible as that sounds, you want in their club. Degrees say that you are willing to deal with a bunch of crap, and that an entire institution has witnessed your dedication to get in that club (Jesus Christ, get a degree).

Worried about money? Go to a cheap school, live on apples and discarded food and stay the hell away from loans. Also, be such a good student (get a degreeeee) that good schools want you. Your terminal degree is what really catches eyes, so don't worry about going to low-end schools until its time for graduate studies.

The best case scenario is that you don't have to look for jobs because employers end up begging YOU to go work with THEM.

Get a degree.

As I mentioned above, if his resume kicks ass, with most employers he will be able to get the initial phone screening; if he kicks ass on that as well it will probably be a non-issue that he doesn't have a degree. He will need to be in the top 5-10% though.

I have no degree and I've done interviews at Google, Barclays, Bloomberg, a variety of hedge funds. The ones that didn't make an offer didn't make one for a reason like I didn't solve their logic puzzle in the most elegant manner.

I have a bachelor of arts degree in computer science and am currently work as a software engineer. I would say that, for all practical purposes, a bachelor's degree in computer science or higher is needed to work as a software engineer; there are exceptions, but these are of course exceptions. That you specify adding an A+ certification and network-administration skills shows you're not really clear what a software engineer is.

Just as physics and mathematics provide the theoretical background for mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers, computer science provides the theoretical background behind software engineering. Unless you're working at a small startup where all employees where many hats, you will not be doing IT troubleshooting and computer-hardware repair of the kind someone with an A+ certification does, and you would not be administering the organization's computer network either; you would be spending all your time doing software-engineering tasks because your employer is paying a premium for that skill while a motivated and smart high schooler can earn an A+ certification and repair computers as a summer job.

Also, low-level developers (especially web developers) can pick up PHP and JavaScript or Visual Basic and learn simple programming and try to get jobs off dice.com. This does not mean they are software engineers because they often lack both the theoretical background in computer science and the understanding of the discipline of software engineering; this shows in the product. A software engineer not only programs but also has a higher-level understanding that can be applied through all phases of the software-development lifecycle. They can design a program and then implement it in code that is well thought, organized, maintainable, fast, stable, and secure; an average PHP web developer might just have enough grasp of programming to get the web app up and kind of running in some cases.

Absolutely. My point was that some people (myself included) have the equivalent of a bachelor's degree or higher in CS theory without having attended school. They will need to if they don't have the degree. Those would be the exceptions you mentioned.