[ask hn]How many of you are dropouts?

I'm a teenage highschool dropout. I got my first computer in 1983, and my last year of highschool was 1988. In the 5 years between those two events, I managed to make myself more money writing code than my parents were making in the real estate market .. and I've never looked back. I've been lucky to be able to say that I grew up with the computer industry, and have always been able to - somehow - stay on the bleeding edge of computerization as its occurred over the decades.

That said, I must admit that the idea of returning to education at some point does arise now and then. I'd love to be able to do it now, in my 40's, when I think its really worthwhile - with what I have under my belt in terms of industrial experience, I think I'd have a lot more fun at school than I would have in the 80's - when the closest thing I could get to a CompSci course back then would have had me using technologies that were already outdated by then, and which wouldn't have taught me anything I wasn't already learning in my non-school hours, hacking away.

Its been a long, hard slog though. I have to tell you that if you decide to go the industrial route over education, be prepared to work hard. Harder than you would work at school, that is for sure - and also, be prepared for the responsibility of having to learn new things, yourself, in an industrial setting, without much hand-holding. I was fortunate enough to have had the right kinds of guru's over the years, as an apprentice working with masters you do get a lot of benefits that school does not provide.

Maybe when I hit 50, I'll go back to school .. mostly so I can contribute, somehow, to the educational scene, and maybe also so that I can write a few of those papers that have been backlogging in my mind over the decades ..

Yeah, trust me on this; they don't presume shit.

So far there's a pile of documents about 30cm high, and that hasn't yet been enough to appease USCIS.

I am a college dropout. I finished high school (just barely), and married my high school sweetheart a week after graduation (best decision ever - we are having our first son any day now. It's a blast). I'm 21 now - 3 years out of high school - and I wouldn't say that I've quite achieved a "successful" life yet, but I'm on the way.

After getting married, I joined my wife's family business of commercial printing. I headed up the IT department there, which mostly meant making sure our servers didn't blow up, and building/enhancing some FileMaker databases. It was by no means the dream job, but it was pretty nice - I learned a ton of things I never would have learned if I dove straight into development.

After I got fed up with being an IT guy, I tried out a semester of college - turns out I hated that just as much as I hated high school. I joined the startup world and became a developer at MySocialCloud[1]. That was my first job where I really got to work and develop with a team. It was remote, which kinda sucked, but it was pretty good for awhile.

MSC had an exodus in December 2012 that I was a part of. I roamed around for a few months looking for a job. I almost took another job with a startup called Elicit Search, but I saw some of the same bad management traits there that I had seen at MSC. Instead, I took a development job with one of my friend's design agencies, Cultivate Studios. It's a mostly menial job - server management, leading an overseas team of developers, maintaining some of our legacies sites - but it's nice. The people are great. I've thought a lot about priorities[2] lately, and while it might not seem like it at first glance, I'm finding Cultivate Studios to be my dream job.

As far as "success" goes, we certainly all define it differently, but I'm finding professional success in my side projects. The biggest challenge with not going to college is you start 4 years behind everyone else in the market. There's a lot of deep computer science knowledge that you can't learn just by "hacking". I've made it a point to dig into those things as often as I can with my side projects. It's starting to pay off, as my most recent project[3] was featured in the New York Times[4]. It's not success yet, but I think I'm getting there.

[1] https://mysocialcloud.com/ [2] http://wegnerdesign.com/blog/on-priorities/ [3] http://getwaltz.com [4] bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/new-clef-plug-in-lets-you-forget-about-your-password/?ref=nicoleperlroth&_r=1

Are you nuts?

You are obviously fishing for an affirmative answer but the truth of life is that having a Masters degree opens 100x more doors than not having it. If you are to talk to someone who has a degree you will always be in the position needing to prove that you are at least as equal as they are. For two people with MSc the conversation is simple -

  - I got my MSc from this uni
  - And I got mine from that one

That's it, parity established. In your case it will be:

  - I got my MSc from this uni
  - I don't have a degree, but ...
    ... 

Every time. Whatever they say, but people are generally wary of self-taught programmers, because there is a non-zero chance of some ridiculous gaps in fundamental education. You may know your programming niche inside out, but you will end up reinventing a bicycle when needing to implement, for example, a task scheduler or not knowing what a dining philosophers problem is. A college degree ensures that you share the same foundation with your peers and that makes life that much simpler for everyone involved.

And dropping out of high school is just entirely altogether idiotic. That's not even up for discussion.

I dropped out of university in order to enter the seminary. I completed all of my seminary courses, then I was rejected for the priesthood because I was thought to be "better suited for research."

Since then, I worked some blue collar jobs, and am now learning web development.