I dropped out directly into a job offer that got me off the ground in my first quarter of college.

That was nearly six years ago, now I'm the CTO at my company.

I think we can generally trust people to follow their gut on this, as to whether school or work is a better idea. I'd been programming since I was a kid and was overall a self-directed learner. For me, school was an immense waste of time.

Books and MIT OpenCourseWare were a much better use of my time.