[sadcodemonkey]

I've found that there's greater range among CS graduate software engineers. Of course there are some truly excellent thinkers who know how to bring their training to bear on all kinds of problems. But some of them, well, you wonder how they even graduated college.

Among the self-taught, there's less variation. If they've managed to land a first job, they're usually at a pretty decent level of knowing how to learn new skills and apply them to solving problems. They were born in the "real world" instead of in the classroom, and it usually shows up in their sensibilities.

Just what I've observed from my own experience. (I'm self-taught myself.)