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When you're enrolled in college it opens up opportunities for internships, software eng is usually decent pay. Consider research, you don't have to interact with business people - academics are more understanding of autism spectrum behavior. I wouldn't expect career progression to be fast taking this route, but at least you'll get some experience.

This was touched on above in slightly different terms, but I'm going to echo it because I see it in the answers here. You were raised differently by your parents. You are missing some basic social skills to interact with other people in a normal way, and unless you are exceptionally brilliant (which most of us aren't) people aren't going to give you a pass on those things because quite frankly it'll make it brutally painful to work with you because literally no instruction or direction can be taken for granted.

At this point in your life the best thing you can do is go to school, try to get some help from your parents or financial aid to focus on your studies, and absolutely do not try to carve your own way through the curriculum. Do the things they put in front of you. Show that you can take on tasks that are boring but necessary and get them done. Embrace the grind. And make some friends! Learning how to interact normally with your peers is a necessary skill that homeschooling rarely helps with.

Personally, I'm a college dropout. I was a mediocre student in high school and a worse one in college because I took time off in between, and was overly impressed with my own ability and didn't put in the work. It took me years to dig out of that hole professionally, but it's possible. And I would never have done it without the social skills and connections I made going to a major university, even if I didn't finish.

Part of what a 4 year college degree shows is that you can stick with something for four years. Combined with some of your other responses, I think it might be a good thing to have under your belt.

Also, depending on the college scene, you might have more opportunities to socialize with lots of people which you may have missed with your home schooling.

Depending on where you live, community college varies from amazingly affordable to right around the same as a state university. Check on student aid as well.

Sometimes you have to jump through the hoops to show you can.

Seconded. If you aren't willing to go through school, why would you be willing to take up a job? Most entry-level jobs will generally be even more boring, require more discipline and jumping through the kind of hoops that you will not enjoy. Unless someone sees a sort of a raw genius in you, they will probably not take a gamble on you.

Because university and work are completely different environments.

University is very academic, work is very practical.

One reason I assume is that a degree is taking tens of thousands of dollars from you whereas the entry level job will be giving that to you.

I always felt being enrolled in a community college was always a key differentiator for me as a candidate. Beyond being a stepping stone into a top 10 CS program for me, I feel like those lines on my resume communicate that I am just a super tenacious and scrappy person.

It is the highest ROI investment I have ever made in myself.

Getting a degree is only partially about learning. A degree signals that you were able to complete a curriculum that, frankly, will almost always have parts you don't like.

So some perspective for you to consider. The first is that as I have advanced in my career (its been solid if not extraordinary) the core curriculum stuff I thought was going to never apply working as a technologist has ended up being suprisingly useful. I wasn't a fan of linear algebra in undergrad, but now I'm using it on a data science related stuff. My politics concentration has ended up very useful at understanding the group and organizational dynamics. Even my forced sociology course lets me understand the reasoning of some my peers/superiors who buy into that line of research far more than if I was coming in blind. Theory of computation... remains useless, but they can't all be winners.

The second, and more important, perspective is that as a person who does some indirect hiring (interviewer plus technical lead, but not people manager), I worry that someone without a degree has trouble driving to completion in the face of disinterest, or is self sabotaging. My projects are mostly enjoyable, but sometimes I (or someone on my team) needs to spend 3-4 weeks writing up a government mandated security document. It sucks, but it has to be done. If I think you might be the type of person that will have trouble completing that independently because there is always more fun stuff to be working on, I don't want you on my team.

A degree is a noisy, loosely correalated signal that you won't be that person. However, as others have mentioned, your writing here indicates you MAY be that person, and not having a degree is a correalative signal that doesn't help your case.

>I think autodidacticism is a better way to learn vs academic path.

A better way to learn, yes perhaps.

A degree shows that you can consistently show up and complete tasks. That's the important part. I haven't read all your posts but it is unclear to me that you actually completed a degree and got the slip of paper?

Unless you have notable (4-5yrs) experience for the position I am looking for, I probably wouldn't hire someone without a degree. It's just a baseline thing you need.

Based on your comments you seem talented but unreliable.

Without completely dismissing the idea of going to school, it might be more your speed to work on an open source project of some sort. If you can build something and launch it, that is cheaper, faster, and (potentially) a lot more fun than going to school. For someone who doesn't like playing the "games" involved in office work or interviews, setting yourself up for consulting work might be a good move too.

Yeah but that open source rarely leads to a job. Yes, many here on HN and open-source may have achieved that but it is extremely rare.

I don't think this person will be able to do consulting considering the actions they have done while interacting with managers, directors, executives.

Deep Springs has something like 18 students, right?

You’re young and you can change your trajectory—have hope!—but it will not be through some home run fantasy. Don’t apply to FAANG or Deep Springs or MIT. Apply to your local community college and to local companies’ IT departments. Keep the job, stay enrolled, get good grades, learn to stay quiet, learn to listen, and only then learn to argue well. After two-three years at community college (depending how fast you go, based on need to work), take your good grades and apply to a few colleges. Go to one that you can afford and isn’t intimidating. Do the work there, too, and graduate. Five years. And then all will be well.

> I think autodidacticism is a better way to learn vs academic path.

It often is a better way to learn, but that's not why I suggested going back to school. It doesn't sound like your technical skills are the reason you're not getting a job.

> So, it might be just one of those things that I'll have to suck up and just do.

Most jobs are full of things you have to suck up and do. As long as you work for someone else, sucking up and doing will be a big part of your career.

Oh, and if you start your own business and work for yourself, chances are you'll spend even more time doing tedious stuff - although it depends on your business.

Doing what you want is the domain of the financially independent, and (some) tenured faculty members.

The autodidact path is a possible path, but its the harder one. To do it succesfully you have to go significantly above what your peers do to prove yourself. It also can often leave gaps in your knowledge and blindspots that you are unaware of.

In the world of software, that probably means having a portfolio of projects you can point to as examples (including but not neccesarily limited to open source projects. Other options include starting your own company (very hard), etc)

Go to degreeforum.net and learn about how to get a Bachelor’s degree in a year. Or read Miguel’s story of how he got a CS degree from WGU in one year. Alternatively if you want to know how to get a Master’s degree without a Bachelor’s e-mail me and I’ll tell you how I did it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900

> I disliked that I would have to take 2 years of core curriculum stuff before even being allowed to take major related courses. I had to reach out to instructors of courses that sounded interesting to get approved to take them. After I started to take the courses I didn't really like them.

You seem to have a real problem accepting that you have to work within the system and follow the same rules as everyone else.

For entry level positions, the best predictor of success hiring manager have is your GPA when you've completed a degree. Further, autodidacticism certainly can be better for some people, but unfortunately it makes it much harder for you to get past initial screenings. If you had stuck with some of your other jobs for a few years, this would matter a bit less, but if you haven't stuck with any job longer than two months, you don't look like a potential asset.

My advice is to go to school. Accept that the core curriculum requirements are there for a reason, and unless the university offers a way to test of part of them, then deal with it. If it's stuff you already know, then look at it as a way to help ensure you have a great GPA for when you do graduate. And when you're in school, take advantage to everything else that's offered - join a few clubs, look for opportunities to learn leadership skills and develop them.

Once you graduate, start your resume there - don't even include things before that - they don't know how old you are, so they'll assume you're just like any other recent grad.

Finally, when you land a job, keep your mouth shut and do the work you're asked to do. Give input when asked, otherwise listen. Listen to what your manager is saying, and to what senior engineers are saying. Watch to see who has influence, and how they wield it. In a few months if your work is speaking for itself, then it's the time to start speaking up more. If you have a good manager, ask for their advice on how to do speak up effectively, if you don't have a good manager, ask one of the engineers that clearly has influence.

Above all, remember that life isn't easy for most of us. It doesn't matter how smart we are, we have to work hard, work well with others, and learn how to work within the system. Otherwise the system will spit you out.