[throwaway345254]

This very similar to what I did. I didn't have a college degree and as a result I thought that I had no chance. I didn't really know what I wanted to do at 18 so I followed in my family's footsteps and went to a top ten business school. I absolutely hated it, got depressed and screwed up my grades freshman year. After moving back home, I realized that I would spend all of my time reading about the stuff I had learned in AP Computer Science so I decided to give being a developer a go. So I started by freelancing for small businesses while learning, practicing and reading constantly on the side. While it was slow in the beginning, after a few years business picked up and I had constant work on larger and larger projects and made solid money.

When I was 23, I was hired for a 6 month contract working with one of the big four consulting firms creating the UI on a project for a major financial firm. I made sure to go above and beyond on the project, and at the end of the engagement the financial firm offered me a full time position as a Senior Front End Developer making ~$125k plus a 12% annual bonus. I was so surprised at the offer I called the developer who offered me the job just to make sure he knew about my terrible educational background. He said "Frankly, college isn't a good indicator of actual skill, I just put it on the list because HR requires me to. I have let more people go with CS degrees from Stanford than anywhere else because they come in and think they know everything. I want people who are constantly trying to improve. People who may not know, but will figure it out and make it happen."

I had always been weary of applying for developer jobs simply because I had messed up in school. I knew that I could was good at it but I was scared that the blemish on my resume had destroyed all hope. It turns out I was completely wrong and should have applied for a "real" job years earlier. Now the age that most people are graduating and becoming junior devs, I am senior dev without a degree leading a team of 6 made up of top CS program grads.