Should I go to college or keep working in Silicon Valley?

I'm working at a startup as a Rails developer. I was hired straight out of high school, which meant being underpaid, though I've spent my time improving my skills. Long story short, the job market in Silicon Valley is really hot - I now have 2 outside offers in the $110-120k range (0-0.5% equity) at early to late-stage startups, and I might be able to bid the offers up to the 130k+ range. At the same time, I'm thinking about going back to college - a non-Ivy but top CS school (think Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, UIUC).

One thought I have is that we're possibly at the high point of the current tech boom and that I should take a job while the market is hot, then go back to school when there's a cooldown. There's also the fact that as a fresh CS grad, 4 years down the line, I would be making roughly the same, or maybe just slightly more, as I could make right now (100-120k).

But I wonder whether going back to school after being in the industry for 2-3 years will even make sense.

Ultimately, I don't know how to weigh the social and educational experience of college against starting my career 4 years early. I'm not particularly concerned that a lack of a degree itself will hold me back in the future. Any thoughts?

Update: no college debt, parents thankfully have enough to pay for it.

I don't really have any advice here, because I'm in a somewhat similar situation myself.

But I'm curious about what your skillset and CS knowledge are, since I'm trying to decide whether I should go back to college or continue working (I'm a little worried about how hard it might be to get a job in the future).

I'd definitely appreciate it if you could describe your skillset and CS knowledge, so I can get an idea of how talented a programmer needs to be to get jobs without a degree. Thanks!

This is just my personal experience but I was in a similar situation.

I dropped out of high school to do web application development. Tried going to a technical college to get some kind of degree while working full time and I eventually had to choose work or go to school.

I chose to work. I was making $100k+ by the time I was 19 and kept advancing my career steadily. To this day probably 90% of the jobs I've applied to haven't questioned the fact that I do not have a degree, it's all about ability and what I have done. Startups make up that other 10% - even though I now have 10 years (i'm 27) of professional, proven development experience I've experienced a lot of apprehension in interviews because I didn't go to college.

So there is definitely some upside financially, but also you may not be able to land your dream job one day because you lack the college experience.

Recent UIUC Alum.

I'm not sure if this will sway your decision, but a lot of lower level CS classes there have "proficiency exams". These exams allow you to test out of certain classes, so if you don't want to take the intro to CS you can just get the credit by passing the test. This could cut your time at school from 4 years to 3 and possibly even 2 if you're smart about it.

Math time! Lets assume you do not work during college and must pay with loans. Here is where you could be in 4 years time with each path.

College: -50k (debt) and a degree in CS.

Work: 480k (cash) and 4 years experience.

There's 530k difference between these two options. The math is a bit off since I didn't factor in tax, but I also did not factor in interest for the debt.

If you really have the skills to get a 120k job then there is no financial reason to go to college. Go to college if you feel the experience is worth a 530k sway in 4 years.