Here is my 2 cents.

I was kicked out of highschool. I never made it to a university. One of the main reasons I failed to succeed in school was because I was programming text-based games on Unix systems when I was 16 years old. I'm about to be 33 years old in a month.

I didn't enter the job market as a programmer. I used my technical skills to work in digital marketing, specifically, communications and marketing within the tech industry. I knew from the start that I could not develop the next video game engine. I did not have the programming let alone the math chops to take on such a huge task.

Having worked with large-scale development teams comprised of all levels of talent, I could honestly say that some of the best programmers and developers I've ever worked with had no degrees. This is because of the same passion I had that caused me to fail in high school long ago.

Passion. This is something I want to highlight here. Now, I've seen a few comments on how some programmers without degrees were actually not so great. Even worse, some had over 10 years of experience in programming and were still junior levels at best.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is due to just not having a degree. This has a lot to do with not having passion in what they are doing. That's because people with passion for what they are doing will continue on their education without a degree and have a higher chance of being successful due to that passion in what they are doing.

Sure, education is critical to your success. I'm not saying it's worthless. All I'm saying is that some people are able to be amazing cooks from simply having a passion for food while others discover that passion while in school. Most of my friends found their passions with the help of school.