I left at 15 as well and I stress to everyone to stay in and finish and if you can make it sensible, financially, etc, go to college.

Around 2005-6 I went from tech support $12/hr to syadmin $40k and got stuck in the 60-80s for a long time. I started doing really well (say $100k+ now $250k+) around (2014-2015) 28-30 then 35+ respectively but I really feel like having to climb the ladder the way I did (tech support to linux admin to SRE+) took way, way, way longer than it should have.

My previous partner (2019-2020) has her Bachelors in UX Research, her first job was $80k and her 2nd two years later was $160k. Obviously different markets, it isn't the 2000s. But man was that eye opening.

My biggest mistake, IMO, was focusing on network engineering and linux administration instead of finally learning software engineering.

15-21 was hell. I worked so many menial jobs for an hourly wage. Pizza delivery, chicken wing delivery, odd computer jobs.. I didn't think I'd EVER dig myself out of that.

Quitting school wouldn’t have helped me. It would’ve locked my into that life for myself.

The chaos I had was mostly at home. School was my calm place.

This is something I hear startlingly often. It's not the majority of kids, by any means, but I've had a number of students who fail classes so they have to go to summer school, just to escape from home.

It wasn’t that intense for me or even a conscious choice. For me it was neglect and a chaotic environment. (Think growing up as a “roommate” of a depressed nonfunctional alcoholic)

Similarly, I had enough positive attention that I wanted to continue and make it to college.

Edit: bad-> intense. I need to stop minimizing what I went through.