Same here, I did some contracting to start my career as it was less credential-dependent than FTE. After showing what I could do for a few years, nobody has ev

Same here, I did some contracting to start my career as it was less credential-dependent than FTE. After showing what I could do for a few years, nobody has ever concerned themselves with my lack of degree since. I've literally spent my whole life studying computers (my dad is a geek so I started at 4 years old), so college was meaningless. Most of my classes I either already knew the subject matter beforehand or knew more about the subject matter than the instructor, so I dropped out. Most of the information is available for free online or in a library if you're self-motivated enough to learn. There are some people who definitely benefit from structured learning environments, so I don't ever try to dissuade people from going to college. Rather, I try to get everyone to just start building stuff and releasing it open source and contributing to open source as soon as they can. If you can learn how to search effectively, read documentation effectively, and program proficiently in at least one language you don't really need college.