Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

I dropped out at 20 as a Junior in college. I had scholarships to school and every reason to stay but I was already working long hours on a business I had started as a Freshman and had no intention of slowing down.

We were growing, by my nineteenth birthday we had 13 employees and by my 20th I got my first acquistion offer.

I decided to take one of those offers and as a condition of it had to consult for the company I had just sold to for a while(turned out to only be 8 months).

So I made the decision to drop out and pursue this opportunity.

There are days when I regret leaving school for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I never really got to be a kid or act like my fellow classmates, however NONE of the reasons I regretted it has to do with not being about to find work I like or chase my dreams.

I recently went through the Winter 2012 YCombinator class(and subsequently left the company as well) Then was picked up by a well known company in the ruby community almost instantly and have continued to be able to find work at levels which I cannot handle.

I run a boutique consulting firm and have for quite a while. I usually do one or two projects a year that amount to anywhere from &125k-$300k. I almost always turn a few projects a year down and rarely do I ever get bored or have nothing to work on.

I think the major difference between the people disappointed they dropped out and the ones that aren't is motivation.

It does not matter how bad you want something you still have to work for it.

The people who sit with their hands on their asses and complain they did not get things handed to them get no sympathy from me.

I grew up the absolute epitome of middle class and have fought my way out of there. I make no apologies for my mistakes and I rarely give up on anything. I think its fair to say most peoples successes or failures lie solely on themselves.

EDIT: I noticed I never said my age(I'm 25)

and also when friends of mine or people who know my story ask me about dropping out or say they are considering it, I almost always tell them DON'T DO IT!

I think there is a place and a special set of circumstances for dropping out, but its not for everyone and certainly not everyone who goes that path is as fortunate as I am, much less as fortunate as Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.

2. College exposes you to subjects that you normally wouldn't be exposed to. Being an engineer is a respectable profession, but if you've never actually tried other subjects, how could you know if it's the right career for you? Or for that matter, how would you be exposed to some of the best things in life, like literature and art? Sure, you could just go to the library, but quite frankly, most people don't know what they don't know. College isn't going to make you into a Renaissance man, but a few years of courses in various subjects will help you develop into a more well-rounded person.

3. I agree that outside-the-classroom experience is essential, but working at a random startup company isn't going to expose you to anything except running a business and the narrow niche it occupies. Great stuff for learning about entrepreneurship, but useless when it comes to basically anything else. You aren't going to learn about humanism or the philosophy of science at your web 2.0 app startup.

4. You'd have a degree, which shows a baseline of competence and is required for advancement in many companies.

5. Starting a business is better than working at a little startup, in my opinion. And there's no reason why you can't do one or both while in school.

6. Not arguing with you about grades, but that's missing the point. College shouldn't be about getting good grades, it should be about broadening your experience of life. If you spent 4 years locked in a room studying engineering, then yes, you'd be better off not going.

You know what? Those same companies and bosses are so caught up in their prejudice that when they see my resume, they never notice I don't have a degree! They still hire me.

The idea you need a "degree from a good college" is silliness.

Here's the thing. Kids aren't ready for the realities of the world. So a 12 year old who brings you their drawing-- even if its crappy- you're going to tell them its great.

All thru out their lives you want to encourage them to do well, so you tell them to get good grades so that they can go to a good college and then to get good grades at their college so they can get a good job.

That first year out of school, how you do in college does affect what kind of jobs you get offered.

But college has not taught you to be a professional. College is the last of the nurseries. When you get your job, you're in the real world. Colleges let you live in dorms and let you make more mistakes but it is still a coddling environment.

When you're in college you have no idea-- because this is your life and its been your life your whole life-- what the difference is between college and the real world.

Everything you're saying there is the assumption of an unspoken privilege. I'm telling you that privilege doesn't exist in the real world. IF you hustle and can sell yourself and have good skills, these things are far more deterministic of how far you go and what you earn than having a degree, let alone what college you went to for that degree.

2. This is pure prejudice. It may be true for many people, but it is not universally true. Some people go to college having no idea what they want to be. That was me and I studied physics but it quickly became clear that software was what I cared about (originally I thought it had been electronics.) It wasn't the exposure to physics that made it clear I wanted to do software. Plus the terrible "exposure" of college to Economics, Sociology, Philosophy, and History turned me off of those subjects for a few years... then later, I started reading up on them, and have become more proficient in 2 of them on my own than I would have been if I'd majored in them in college. College doesn't make you more well rounded. You can sleep thru all those classes. Its not like you can't order all the literature you want from amazon.com, or see great paintings at museums or on the internet. What it does is force you to spend time on things that are outside your subject area-- and that would be valuable if college delivered anything useful about them, but it doesn't. Those classes are a full employment program for liberal arts graduates.

3. I think you're speaking from a lack of experience here- because if you'd ever started and grown a business, you'd know it has an impact on many aspects of your life. For instance, my deep love of history and economics were as a result of starting and growing a tech business. Economics is important to business, for obvious reasons, history less so. Further, your response shows a form of anti-intellectualism that is the real crime of colleges. They actually teach people not to think, in a way, but to believe. The anti-business perspective is a real shame, because its actually anti-life. (It was my study of philosophy that helped me understand that.)

4. A degree shows nothing, and is not required. You only think a degree is required for advancement because you've not been working in the real world. What determines advancement is performance usually, though often politics and the external state of the company with regards to your area of it (Eg: having a good year or not.) Nobody remembers you don't have a degree.

5. Starting a business is better than being an employee of a little startup, which is better than going to college. But yes, you can do either while going to college, though you're trading off the amount of education you'll get in favor of spending time at college.

6. People who need their life experiences broadened by college aren't really going to get it in college. Oh, wait, you're talking about partying, right? At any rate, I think you've got a false dichotomy going here. Whether you are broad minded and well rounded is determined whether you are curious about things and follow up on that curiosity, not being forced to sit thru some really low level "education" in subjects you're not interested in. It comes from pursuing your interests without regard for which subject matter they lead you to.

I was not being silently discriminated against because I was rising faster than my peers almost all the time.

The market forces companies to do this because if they don't treat their employees well- particularly their employees with ability- then these employees will go somewhere that does.

Frankly, there's no reason to lie either. Having a college degree shows a certain timidity and inability to think for oneself, to me anyway. I'll cut someone slack for it when hiring because at that age you don't necessarily need to be that certain about yourself.