This isn't relevant but I wanted to add another perspective to this discussion.

I am a senior Active Directory specialist for a very large global company so we are talking systems rather than hardware or software development.

I Joined the British Army at 16 and so skipped higher education. I retrained when I left the Army at 27 and moved into corporate IT with zero experience (resettlement training). Hard work, diligence and and eagerness to learn have provided a great base on which to build experience allowing me to climb the IT ladder To be fair to the academic process, I was a linguist in the Army and so spent several years in an intense (8hours + 3 hours homework, 5 days a week) academic environment learning Russian, Spanish and Serbo-croat.

While this is the UK, not North America, I would say that experience, both vocational and of life, can open doors even without a degree.

NB: Ironically I am considering doing a correspondence degree in mathematics but that is just for interest