Fanscale,
More education never hurts... and having a 4-year degree or higher will always be beneficial - especially if you want to move into management. Remember, it is unfortunate fact, but pure technical skills is not the only thing that gets you hired. Most companies now have you interview at least two people - your potential manager and a HR manager. You have to impress your potential manager with your technical competency and impress the HR manager with your "Business" competency.
The HR manager will judge you on the way you dress, your haircut, you mannerisms and how you "interview". If you have tatoos, cover them. This person will care if you have a degree or not. HR will care about your GPA and will call your references. So make sure your reference are people good on the phone! They will feel they need to really know you as a person to determine if you are a good hire. Of course, this can't be done - people date years, get married and all hell breaks loose - but HR people think 3 hours of talking with you and the references YOU provide is enough to determine if you are a good hire - so just treat the HR interview like a first date with a really hot person and you'll be fine!
Your supervisor is different - he/she just wants a capable developer who is willing to learn and continually learn new skills. Having a degree and/or certifications is usually enough for them cause your supervisor understands degrees are outdated the day you get them. Also, remember schools are ALWAYS behind cutting edge technologies so the best have learned long ago to continue educating themselves. Everyone who graduated and then got a job says the same thing in 6 months - "I learn more in six months than 4 years of school!".
Certifications are good to a point - Certs that ask you what keyboard shortcut to do something in an IDE - like a lot of MS certs - is just stupid - but really testing people on code writing capability via multiple choice is really not possible. So don't be surprise if you meet managers who don't care for Certs because they've hired people with them that really couldn't code - but knew how to open a wizard with a Ctrl-Alt shortcut!
If you go far enough to higher level certs that test with simulations and/or labs - then you will have a good cert that can get you a job - but the intro level certs are not enough by themselves.
Good Luck!
Hope this info helps...
