I got a job first and my degree later.

At work nobody knows what degree you've got. I mean some people insist to be called Dr. X if they have a Ph.D. (and in some cultures that's more common). You can have a B.Sc. in biology, or an M.Sc. in EE, or a law degree or no degree and nobody knows. As a manager in a large tech company I didn't even know that for the people I managed. I would usually find out people's background through random talk but it's not information I had access to. I was surprised to find one of the rising stars didn't finish his degree and wanted to take some time off to finish it.

Where it does matter is in the hiring process and especially for juniors and larger companies.

> I've never seen a time when tech is less about engineering than right now.

Sad but my experience as well.

As someone who started being more self-educated (I did learn a lot of theory myself) and only later finished my degree (started, dropped out to do some real work, came back much later) I do think a good CS program teaches a lot of important things. Most importantly the ability to learn and understand research in this area. Not all the specific things you're going to learn are going to be applicable all the time, some will some of the time, and not having that background at all is limiting. You can learn this without going through the academic system but it's much harder and most people don't and stay stuck in some sense.