[rayiner]

At ~20 my boss at the startup where I worked summers suggested that if I joined full-time he'd hire me on at a very good salary. I stayed in school for no reason particularly better than "my parents would kill me."

In retrospect, I am tremendously glad I didn't drop out. I went on to grad school in a different field (where I met my wife!) and love the work I'm doing now. And while not having a college degree wouldn't have held me back in software, necessarily, I could never have entered the field I am in now without the degree.

To use a somewhat different example, my FIL worked his way up to a director-level IT job without any college degree, but now in his 50's he wants to move over to doing non-profit work and is absolutely feeling the lack of the credential.

The bottom line is that life is long and you're young. You can't know what you'll want to be doing 20 years from now, and there's a lot of value to keeping your options open at this age.