No degree here, but never lied on a resume either. It was very difficult landing my first job (in my teenage years), but eventually I got into the industry by starting a company and going bankrupt two years later. Frankly it was a wonderful way to get going, and nobody has significantly questioned my credentials since then, and especially not now that I have 20 years of professional expertise. Seriously, just start a company, and if you fail at age 16, nobody really cares, and you've got something on your resume. To get a few hundred (or thousand) bucks, get out MS Word (or Google Docs), type out several dozen pages of detailed business plan, and show it to all family, friends, and ex-teachers (but stay away from banks and VC, because they don't care and you're wasting their time). Now that it's 2012 and all, you only have to beg (or mow lawns for) $500 to land an iOS developer license. Then you can write a resume, show your first year of experience, and talk about your app in the App Store.
That said, I'm not going to tell you that I'm just so special that I couldn't have used college, and the people who do say that, seem to have chips on their shoulders. There is certainly an appreciation for design patterns and the humanities that any college would have taught me, that I had to learn I needed, and go and seek out on my own, and that's hard. But then again, college students today are faced with the prospect of a lifetime of debt, just to land a career with an average (I said average, not you or me) 15-year half life. It hardly seems appropriate.
Anyway, point is, you never need to lie if you have the enthusiasm. With enough enthusiasm, the experience eventually builds to a point where nobody questions your formal education.
That said, I'm not going to tell you that I'm just so special that I couldn't have used college, and the people who do say that, seem to have chips on their shoulders. There is certainly an appreciation for design patterns and the humanities that any college would have taught me, that I had to learn I needed, and go and seek out on my own, and that's hard. But then again, college students today are faced with the prospect of a lifetime of debt, just to land a career with an average (I said average, not you or me) 15-year half life. It hardly seems appropriate.
Anyway, point is, you never need to lie if you have the enthusiasm. With enough enthusiasm, the experience eventually builds to a point where nobody questions your formal education.