Interestingly, the advice in this article pretty much aligns with what I did, although I can't claim I did what I did with any grand strategic vision. I mostly blew off high school doing the bare minimum necessary to graduate, while spending as much time as possible in-person and online with adults who worked in tech and would mentor me, working on side projects, and volunteering on open source. I went to college, but ultimately dropped out, with my most valuable time at community college where I was able to get tech certifications as part of my classwork.

It's been more than 20 years since I left high school and I've had a very good career and life despite having no degrees and a piss-poor high school GPA, because ultimately none of that actually matters in the real world. All that matters is who you know and whether you can do the job. If you know people who will give you a chance and you can actually succeed at the job, you'll do fine. Learning actual skills that other people care about and value is far more important than being able to regurgitate bullshit for a test to get a piece of paper that's meaningless. My only real regret is that I didn't just drop out of high school and get my GED so I could focus more time on my side-projects at the time.