I dont even know what SDE means, and I am an engineer who works on software. Never got a CS degree, but I took one or two programming classes in college. I definitely couldn't tell you what an IT person does. Did look into a CS masters once and decided I had no interest whatsoever in doing algorithm development research of any kind, or any research related to compilers, or any of that junk. It was too niche for me. Anyway, dunno what the point of this comment was supposed to be. I guess what im saying is, yes, I agree, the "need to go to college" thing is overrated. We need to teach kids there are a lot of paths to take, and not all of them leave you with crushing debt.