I've worked with people in tech who dropped out, and people with bachelors, masters, and phD, and those with degrees in the arts. I personally have a bachelors in computer engineering.
I'm sure there's surviorship bias, but the people who dropped out are probably some of the best. There's certainly some value in a CS/CE bachelor's curriculum, and occasionally, something would come up where knowledge from a course was useful; but mostly a 4 year degree in CS/CE is a certificate of sticking to hard things that are computer related. You've probably got some project under your belt that shows you can stick to hard things that are computer related, even if it's not as formalized.
If it really bothers you, work through The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth. If it bothers you a little, but not that much, maybe borrow it from a library and look through the table of contents and read a few sections that look interesting.
I bet you're right about the survivorship bias, but it's nonetheless reassuring (comforting?) to hear that. That's also been my impression, though it's hard to actually believe schooling doesn't accomplish more.
On that note:
Had I stayed in college, I would've been a senior this year. I recently brought over a college friend to discuss a paid internship at my company with him, and was very underwhelmed with what he had accomplished during his university tenure (this being a quite prestigious institution). From the stories he told of professors assigning grindingly futile projects to his lack of knowledge about relatively widespread concepts like distributed hash tables, it was a rather disappointing conversation.
I still think the institution of the university is hard to replicate elsewhere, but the content (and maybe the people) certainly need an update!
Thank you for the note about Knuth's book. I'll check it out in more depth — I have the PDF version sitting in my downloads folder. My startup is currently being acquired, but once that's settled I'll have time for some holiday reading :).
I'm sure there's surviorship bias, but the people who dropped out are probably some of the best. There's certainly some value in a CS/CE bachelor's curriculum, and occasionally, something would come up where knowledge from a course was useful; but mostly a 4 year degree in CS/CE is a certificate of sticking to hard things that are computer related. You've probably got some project under your belt that shows you can stick to hard things that are computer related, even if it's not as formalized.
If it really bothers you, work through The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth. If it bothers you a little, but not that much, maybe borrow it from a library and look through the table of contents and read a few sections that look interesting.