He has a degree from University of California, Berkeley (aka UC Berkeley or Cal) and it's a top notch university in US. It's often ranked #1 public university in USA and in top 5 or 10 even when other expensive private universities are included in the ranking, like Stanford, Harvard, MIT.
Obviously it all depends on the major and other factors, but I'd say simply getting into and graduating from UC Berkeley does mean something.
Of course lots of smart, hard working students simply go to local community colleges to save $ etc. But when a recruiter sees UC Berkeley on resume and they want someone with a degree, it give a good impression.
And let's not forget on HN survey, about half of the working programmers are self-taught.
And who knows, maybe he had side project(s) or examples of code to show.
Obviously it all depends on the major and other factors, but I'd say simply getting into and graduating from UC Berkeley does mean something.
Of course lots of smart, hard working students simply go to local community colleges to save $ etc. But when a recruiter sees UC Berkeley on resume and they want someone with a degree, it give a good impression.
And let's not forget on HN survey, about half of the working programmers are self-taught.
And who knows, maybe he had side project(s) or examples of code to show.