Maybe I'm just traumatized by 00s coders, but I hear rejection of college as rejection of knowledge and critical thinking. I admit school ain't all that, but you CANNOT reject it all.
Not just academia. Google is jarringly restrictive in who they hire. If you haven't memorized the Data Structures textbook, you can't even talk to a recruiter. I've been pretty successful without even glancing at that book (since most business domain data structures aren't complex).
Now...I have improved my knowledge of complex data structures like graph traversal, but it's rare this knowledge is needed in every day business-oriented development.
