It's hard to imagine recruiters giving up on the safety net of "minimum degree in X, Y or Z", unfortunately. Even at companies where engineers may be willing to dig deeper, résumés still have to clear these basic filters.
Of course, I would prefer if a person's actual experience and education were assessed more carefully. These days, it's conceivable that someone has spent a lot of time on OpenCourseWare, or been self-taught programming through experience with open-source projects; there are a lot of ways to be accomplished without a degree. It is becoming harder to do simple filtering of applicants.
For technical work, contract jobs can let you avoid the filters, and end up hired full-time in a position that has such a minimum degree filter. I did this to get into my current position, and I have "some college" rather than any degree.
For this, of course, you have to be good enough that they really want to hire you at the end of your contract.
Of course, I would prefer if a person's actual experience and education were assessed more carefully. These days, it's conceivable that someone has spent a lot of time on OpenCourseWare, or been self-taught programming through experience with open-source projects; there are a lot of ways to be accomplished without a degree. It is becoming harder to do simple filtering of applicants.