In Germany it depends on how you look at it, at the more conservative / "traditional" companies (which is still a lot of them, including almost everything I hear about outside Berlin/Hamburg) programmers without degrees aren't looked down on relative to programmers with degrees, but programmers as a whole are looked down on compared to even the lowest managers (who probably have a postgraduate degree), and aren't trusted to do anything themselves. It's more that degrees aren't valued at all for programmers, than a widespread belief that someone without a degree can still make good decisions.
