[pydanny]

Yes. I've encountered them. My anecdotal evidence is that all who dropped out because of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill gates, or Peter Thiel showed them 'a different way' have completely stagnated.

On the other hand, anecdotally, those dropouts who put their heads down and got stuff done, some of them did pretty well.

Finally, anecdotally, in my experience, people with college degrees got hired faster and in times of woe, are the last to be let go. In fact, many SV companies (Google, for example, but funded startups often work the same way), won't hire you without a college degree unless you've done something notable. Being notable, by definition, means you are in the minority of any group. making dropping out to achieve success a risky proposition.

Of course, your mileage may vary. ;-)

[opendais]

Anecdotally, the only people that have been laid off/fired in IT at my current $DAY_JOB are people with degrees.

I think the fundamental issue is perception matters. The perception of having a degree matters to some people. To some people, its about performance metric X instead, etc.