I'm going to take a contrarian view. My answer is, "it depends." You have a GED as an option. It is considered a high school equivalency. It's a single test th

I'm going to take a contrarian view. My answer is, "it depends." You have a GED as an option. It is considered a high school equivalency. It's a single test that covers a battery of subjects. Pass it, and you're effectively done with high school. I didn't finish high school in a traditional fashion. I ended up going into foster care as a teenager and bouncing from home to home before I aged out of the system. I had to go to work early. Here's the kicker: since I went to college later and had some college experience, the GED is forgotten. No employer in my 20+ year career has ever asked about it. I eventually ended up getting a 4-year degree, and even though it took a long time for me to get to that point, it didn't hamper my career in the least. I just finished a 4 year project freelancing as an automation coder for a telecom company. I did VERY well over those 4 years, in terms of income. Now I am an employee of that telecom. "Success" for you will depend on how you define your goals. Your path there will very likely not be linear. Grit is required along the way, no matter what decisions you make. I would recommend you take a long-term view, and not only think about the moment. That may very well mean taking the developer job. But if you do that, and curtail your formal education for now, remember you'll want to address that later. In my case, the experience FAR outweighed the formal education. Feel free to email me, I'm happy to talk with you more about this.