DropoutSuccess

Let me elaborate a little more on why you need to learn OpenStack and SDN.

It is the new technology. It will dominate the marketplace in 2-4 years and the demand for people who understand it will be incredibly high while the people who know it will be relatively low. This means more jobs for fewer people and much higher asking prices for your skills.

The best thing to do is to get a small linux server or two (cheaper is better). Install OpenStack. Tear it apart. Be insanely curious how everything works. If you learn OpenStack through and through you will immediately have invested in your future and will become supremely marketable in the next 2 years. Do this well and you will make six figures in the next 3-4 years.

That's actually a really good question. The only other industry I could imagine getting "rich" with little prior skills in is sales-type positions.

I think good sales people are "born" though. So I would be open to suggestions on how to go down that path. Emotional intelligence probably has a lot to do with it.

Every line of this is gold. I hope a lot of people read this.

Like you mentioned I have pretty much two paths ahead of me. Start my own consulting firm or go into management.

I'm trying the management approach. I need help figuring out how to get there without a degree (difficult but not impossible). I will probably start working on my associates in business.

I will also probably say "fuck it" and start my own consulting firm.

Luckily, I was working for a company before I dropped out. I never told them I did not graduate. A lot of companies that followed assumed and never checked.

EDIT: Replaced "graduate" with graduate

A LOT of job hopping. It's true that you are valued at what you made at your last job.

It is critical to articulate your skills from the position of helping the company.

A lot of it was probably luck too. That I had interest in a booming industry.