How to gain more work experience?

How did college dropouts who now work at high tech companies gain the experience and skills to get their job?

• If you have little to no college experience, and you have a nice job, preferably at a high tech company (because that's where my interest lies), how did you do it? What's your story? Are promotions possible when you have no degree? Or is that primarily based on knowledge and skills and not so much about what degree you have?

• Answer:

  I have a college degree (computer engineering), but there are plenty of people working at high tech companies that don't. That's because you can learn programming to some decent degree (no pun intended) by yourself.  You don't learn the intricacies in many cases, but you can learn enough to write programs that sell well (shareware in the past, phone & tablet apps now). Basically, the children of the 80s and newer that had their own computers and taught themselves or took classes/camps as kids. I think another reason is that high tech companies are in many ways closer to meritocracies. If you can show what you know (and/or can learn), you can get an entry level job... Then it grows from there.