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Notes -
The go-getter smooth-talking company-founder types with at least slightly better than average intelligence are always going to succeed. Sometimes they'll fail big time but unless in doing so they seriously piss off the government or organized crime or the wrong nerd they'll bounce back up. They're just a completely invalid sample because their success is overdetermined.
A more typical programmer type will, unless they start out in a massively successful startup, be handicapped throughout much of their career by the lack of a degree -- their resume won't get past mindless filters. In good times they'll be underpaid for their skill level, in bad times unemployed.
The people getting "I went to college" degrees will do even worse, either working at a much crappier category of job or being unemployed much more often.
Scientific types will of course be completely unable to get a job in their field without a degree, and probably an advanced degree; when I was in college it was said that a B.S. in chemistry qualified you to wash glassware.
I admit I don't have an RCT of any of this, however.
N=1, but it's not all that bad. I probably got stuck in some filters, but I was never unemployed, and if these "average salary stats" websites are to be trusted, I wasn't underpaid either.
Maybe, or maybe you're of above average ability and so were in fact underpaid for the value you created.
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