I've been working as a software engineer for a few years now, and one of the things I've always loved about this industry is how results-oriented it is. I've been on teams where the person sitting to my left had a CS degree from Harvard or Stanford, and the person sitting to my right had a GED. They were both able to do the work, and nobody was hung up on their pedigree.
I have bachelor's master's degrees in linguistics. While I was earning them, I thought I would end up pursuing a career in academia. Like you, I realized at some point that wasn't the career for me. I've been fairly successful in my engineering career since then, but that's been based way more on self learning, and on a 3 month intensive program, than on my two academic degrees.
Knowing what I know now, would I tell my younger self to finish school or not? That's a good question. I'm lucky enough to come from a family with enough money that I could get those degrees without student loan debt. If this is the case for you, and if you're passionate enough about some academic subject to put your life on hold to study it for a few years, or if you'd just like to become more well-read and well-rounded, I say go for it. On the other hand, academia can function as a prolonged adolescence for many people, and I know many very well educated people who struggle financially (read some of Robert Kiyosaki's books for a much more in depth discussion of this phenomenon).
TL;DR if you want to go to school for its own sake and you can do it without putting yourself into massive debt, do it. If your goal is to be financially successful, spend that time working and learning from entrepreneurs and investors instead.
