I dropped out of high school toward the end of my junior year.

My reasoning (outwardly and to convince my mom) was that my GPA was terrible, and I should just get my GED, go to community college, then move to a four year university. In reality, that was part of it, but also I had a lot of social anxiety, which I think greatly contributed. Also I hated learning in school, that format just doesn't work for me (memorizing facts, etc). I need to learn by doing, like building a project.

I was very into computers, usually messing around on my PC all night instead of doing homework. So while I was failing school, I was learning a lot about computers and was very good at it, so I sort of always knew I'd be able to make money, degree or not.

So I did drop out and get my GED that summer. I bullshitted around community college for two years, dropping half my classes, then stopped and just started working. Never did go to that four year college.

And since I had already signed up for the SAT before dropping out, I ended up coming back to the school to take it. Turned out I got a 1490 (out of 1600), which looking back I should have just stayed in school because a ~2.0 GPA plus 1490 would have at least gotten me into a decent state school.

At the time I didn't regret it at all, but now that I'm pushing 30, looking back I really do regret not going to college. Only in the past year have I really gotten rid of my social anxiety, and that was only by actively choosing to leave my comfort zone. Dropping out let me stay in my comfort zone much longer than I would have had I just graduated and gone to a four year school in another city. Also I never got a senior year, which looking back kind of sucks...

But while I never went to a four year school, I did spend around four years working close to 100 hours a week, every week working on an app I built and teaching myself programming. I consider that my college degree, even though I don't have a piece of paper.

As far as how I'm doing now, those four years of hard work ended with me moving the the bay area and landing a job at one of the large tech companies, making around ~250k/year. The topic of my lack of a degree only barely came up in the interview, mainly to just say they didn't care as long as I knew my shit. This is probably specific to the tech industry though, and by the time I interviewed there I had worked on several large, highly rated projects, and had a lot of code on GitHub, so my resume spoke for itself without the degree. I just left education completely off my resume.

So for anyone thinking about dropping out, I wouldn't recommend it, even though it worked for me. But if you're dead set on it and have good tech skills, you'll be alright as long as you work hard to keep learning outside of school. If I hadn't done that I'd be a broke loser right now with no job prospects.