[alex504]

In my experience none of what you are talking about is necessary to have a successful tech career. In my case I have an English degree, went to a boot camp, and worked fairly hard at medium sized companies for a few years. I work at a company where I make as much or more than a lot of doctors. A lot of my colleagues are from places like Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc.

I could probably not have even gone to college, it was just getting the first job that mattered. Probably wouldn't have gotten into Google or whatever with that first job, but it isn't hard to work your way up if you interview well.

Maybe we disagree about what "really successful" means. I personally feel that the way things are now if I was actually motivated to make as much as possible I could get promoted and ladder my way up about as far as I wanted to in this industry, but I have no desire to do this because I make plenty of money and only work about 25 hours a week. If I wanted to I could also go work for some exciting startup, but I would have to work a lot harder which is something I don't want to do.

The point being that what you do in high school, college, or even most of your career doesn't really matter that much if you are smart and can actually figure out what you are doing.