[scottishcow]

Lots of great resources here, but as mentioned in the essay signaling based on external validation is still crucial. (OP seems to have won a Thiel Fellowship, I’d assume that has a stronger signaling value than your typical college degree.) As much as I hate it, the world runs on limited resources and people and organizations have no choice but to rely on some sort of signaling scheme as a filtering mechanism.

[sanxiyn]

I agree, but the signal can be pretty small. I contributed to Firefox and it was good enough to be hired by web browser company without a degree. After that, work experience was good enough for pretty much anything.