How screwed am I if I drop out?

Probably not “screwed” at all really. From a professional point of view anyway, since many of the practical things you’ll learn may not match industry expectations by the time you graduate.

What is concerning is this “visceral hatred” for the curriculum. You’d be well served by exploring why that is the case! Ask around, what are graduates of your program up to these days? Say 1, 5, 10 years after graduation. Search around on LinkedIn to get some idea.

I know the disgruntled genius trope is popular on HN, but it is extremely rare irl. What is common irl, however, are delusional undergraduates that feel the faculty at their school is holding them back from a life of fast cars and never ending excitement!

If OP thinks college is somehow eroding some former joy in mathematics than I have no idea how jumping straight to some job will help? Could it be that reality is just not meeting some unrealistic expectations expectations?

If I were this student’s faculty advisor I would spend a lot of time talking to them about this. In my experience this sounds like the tip of a very large iceberg that may require some counseling and intervention.

You are at a great university. Completing this will be to your ultimate benefit. You have no idea what the futures holds - maybe you will want a PhD, MD, etc etc. This gives you more options.

Make it work for you - skip as many classes as possible, turn in whatever shit they require. Just get in and out as fast as you can. Also taking CLEP exams can help you graduate one year early.

I had the same experience as you. In classes, it felt like my skin was on fire. About 20% of my effort went towards classes, and 80% went towards my own passion projects.

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education" - Mark Twain

Your resume will get thrown out at the first HR screen if you don't have a college degree. It sucks, but it is true. All the folks preaching about how you can do tech without a degree are glossing over the, yes you can do it but it is playing the game on the hardest difficulty.

I think you should explore different majors (I'd recommend math) or just using the next three years to embrace your hobbies. You don't have to get all A's in college. Just do what you need to get B's and focus on a startup idea or something else.

Immediately, you'll be fine. As you progress in your career, you'll be worse off, both because of the lack of a credential and because you don't have fundamentals that you get in a degree. University isn't for job skills anyway.

The current education system has a lot of faults, but on average, its still beneficial, and even if you just want to criticize it, your in a much better position to do so and be heard if you actually did it. I'd say suck it up and stay in school. It's a long game.

So I found myself in a similar position as you when I was younger. The market wasn't even remotely as good as it is now for software developers yet I thought it was going to be an industry that would take off. As such I went to work as an entry level software developer. I worked around 35 hours a week.

I DID NOT drop out of college completely. Instead I really just slow rolled the whole process. It took me 6 years and this included usually taking 1-2 courses over the summer. It was not an enjoyable time and my classes never stopped sucking. That being said I am glad I completed it and having a job really took a lot of pressure off of my to try and get the best grades. I would shot for a solid B and when I knew that was in the bag I would completely ramp down my scholastic efforts.

I think if I could give you any advice it is that life is hard, no matter the company, its location, the country it is in, the industry that it operates in, nor the people who work there be 100% what you like. You will run into innumerable challenges and situations you can't stand in your career, do not develop the habit of running away from them. Instead focus on what you can change to make them less painful. Leaving is always an option but I would strongly encourage you to not let it be the first one!

Some other food for thought, could you change your degree from just being CS focused to being more interdisciplinary? When I went to school they had a build your own degree where you could combine courses from three different colleges, for example you could do a Statistics, Finance, and CS degree. Just a thought.

I dropped out and don't regret it (I'm 45), but there definitely have been times that I have. You'll have to pay your dues one way or the other--it took 5-10 years before I felt like I didn't have to sweat the "education" part of the job interview.

Everyone's a little different, and mostly I'm joking but I'll say: If you think school erodes your passions, just wait until you experience industry.

You won’t be screwed at all, but you’re right that much of market has an odd view on entry level positions (if you only look at FAANG). There’s plenty more reasonable (and challenging) places to start your career. I’m hiring in Chicago. Reach out if you want to chat. Email is in profile.

Switch to a different major.

Pick something fun, like English or History. Now is time to learn how to make friends. If you don't develop social skills now the rest of your life will be harder.

The degree doesn't really matter in my experience, but college is still a great way to widen your worldview.

Stay in school and get your degree. Also don't change your major if you're interested in working in software in the future.

You might not be completely screwed if you drop out but there's a lot of potential downside and no upside apart from the short term personal gratification you might get from dropping out.

As other people have alluded, the solution is to not join the brutal open market for entry jobs. Find a path via internships to an entry job, stay for some experience, and then compete outside the entry market.

My advice to you is to reduce course load for a few semesters to around 9 credits. Graduating late is fine. Taking time off is also fine, but just know it’s harder to go back once you do.

Not at all. Provided you don't get hit by a bus or contract a disease, you've no idea how gloriously many years you've remaining to make mistakes and fully recover.

Try to get into a co-op program where you alternate school and work, or something similar.

Well one good thing about being a student is the amount of free and discounted stuff you get, particularly in IT/CS-type interests. Access to student discounts on hardware and free/low cost educational versions of software is real nice. You could view it as, basically, some obnoxious drudgery in exchange for some pretty sweet benefits like access to the student stuff I said above, but also university resources like classes in whatever else you'd want to learn, researchers who you might enjoy working with even outside of the CS department, networking and internship opportunities, etc.

And not to put too fine a point on it but the university years are probably going to be your last chance to fuck around and explore and enjoy life as a young person.

It is also extremely hard to go back to school as an adult because if you have anything resembling a life like work or kids or responsibilities then suddenly normal school things like "the professor decided there's a group project and presentations are at 12:45pm on Thursdays and what do you mean you can't make it?"

So, dear programmer, something that will be of use to you as debugging practice.

In fact, think of it as debugging. You are not getting the desired outcome for the inputs. Why?

Are you just burned out? Can you spend a summer digital nomadic it through Thailand or something to get a break from school? Take a summer job or internship and see if you like actually working as much as you think?

Is it the major or program itself? Would you be better in something like Computer Information Systems that's less theoretical? Would you be happier taking liberal arts classes all day and coding all night? Etc.

Okay you can pass the coding interview, but you don't say what you actually want to do. There's a reason so many startups were founded in college dorm rooms. You have few obligations so low cost of failure, access to world class resources, and a peer group for support or additional skills. Try your ideas out and see if you're as good as you think. And if you start making money, maybe then drop out.

On the other hand, maybe the school isn't a good fit? Do you need a different major or different type of school? Maybe you need something more like WGU where its more self paced and you can just do it at your own pace. Maybe you need to be in a department where people are working kn the thing you want to work on.

Speaking from experience, I dropped out because I knee what I wanted to do and I was good at it and ugugugugygughhh why am I taking this dumb old class when I could be doing my thing?

However: -the bullshit you have to deal with in college is tiny small potatoes compared with Life itself. You don't know that yet but you will. I finally dragged myself to the finish line years later and spent a lot of time going "haha oh yeah I totally would've gotten mad about this."

-while the market is hot right now, there is no guarantee it will remain as such. I dropped out a few months before the dotcom bust. And then 2008. And so on.

-did you see that post going around where the person filled their resume with random buzzwords and it sailed through the keyword filters and got them a ton of callbacks? Lots of places are using resume screening software where your resume only gets to a human if it gets through the filters. And they can check the box for "has degree" and never see your resume even if you're qualified in every other way. Less so for startups and tech companies but a thing for lots of other places you might want to work one day.