Take the group of programmers who have written more than 30 blog posts about programming. X% of them are good hires, and 100-X% are bad hires.
Now take the group of programmers who have written less than 30 blog posts about programming. Y% of them are good hires, and 100-Y% are bad hires.
Is X > Y, or X == Y, or X < Y?
That is the issue.
And that is the way degrees are used (when used rationally). The claim with degrees is that X is more than Y, not that most good programmers have degrees or anything else. That may be so. Then someone defended using degrees by saying there is a lack of alternative tests that are sufficiently cheap. That's not true. There are lots of cheap tests, and I have suggested 2 for which I believe X>Y is likely, and which, if studied, might turn out to have a higher X than the degree test.
Now take the group of programmers who have written less than 30 blog posts about programming. Y% of them are good hires, and 100-Y% are bad hires.
Is X > Y, or X == Y, or X < Y?
That is the issue.
And that is the way degrees are used (when used rationally). The claim with degrees is that X is more than Y, not that most good programmers have degrees or anything else. That may be so. Then someone defended using degrees by saying there is a lack of alternative tests that are sufficiently cheap. That's not true. There are lots of cheap tests, and I have suggested 2 for which I believe X>Y is likely, and which, if studied, might turn out to have a higher X than the degree test.