You assume you can land a job without a degree which is becoming harder all the time Even if you manage to pull it off in this market, your ur starting salary will almost certainly be lower, your opportunities for advancement will be limited,.etc. I know several SWEs without degrees. Every single one got in years ago when that was more feasible. And then they all .tried and failed to get degrees later one because they realized how necessary it is, but harder to do the longer you put it off For people who are really in a rush there's WGU. Not the same thing as a traditional degree but better then nothing
imo, if you want to go into software engineering, you shouldn't plan to drop out of college. The path of least resistance is getting a degree, so you should do anything in your power to not drop out. Getting into the field without a degree is getting harder and harder as time goes on. I'll refer back to dowcet's message here. All the degreeless SWEs he knows realized later on how important a degree is and tried to get it later, even after they had a job