Oooh this hits home. Director of data science at company i was a DA for wanted to interview me after seeing how technical and advanced one of my projects was. Used python, created some complex d3 visualizations, segmentation models, information display algorithms beyond top-k that fit on screen, and processed some of the data using fp-growth.

HR sits me down and says no because i dont have a masters. Tried to plead my case but nope. Now i do freelance ds and da work. Clients seem to be happy and i dont apply to the super technical quant esque roles or roles that require deep knowledge in stats disciplines i know little about like time series forecasting.