[ojr]

I left college, the opportunity cost is too high for me, I can't live the luxury of buying a software book for around $200 just to write pseudo code, hopefully the trillion dollar school loan debt bubble will pop and there will be more changes to the system, I have open source projects and closed source projects. I live in Boston, Massachusetts so I know when I apply for a job I am likely going against people with degrees, maybe even some from colleges like MIT and Harvard. That hasn't stopped me from applying and has not stopped employers from setting up interviews.

Of course especially in a college-filled place like Boston there are employers that will not even look at you without a degree. So having a degree will widen your opportunities and strengthen your job security but at the cost of going to college and time you could be doing other things.

My advice is to work on a project that generates some sort of revenue. I think the ability to show that you can make software that creates profit is very valuable. I would hire Jane that drop out of college and earned $10,000 from a SaaS application than Joe who earned a Computer Science degree by googling solutions to his Java homework problems.

Fortune favors the prepared mind. So pick up good programming books from the bay and try to read some chapters. It is normal for companies in an interview to test how well you know different data structures and algorithms so if you can't learn that type of material on your own, you might need to go to college and let it be forced upon you.

Whatever software technologies you are passionate about learn it well and I truly believe in the long run the trendy new popular technology you bet your career on will pay off, you might be 22 before it happens though.

I believe in you!