Ask HN: Should I quit my CS Masters Program?

I have a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from a top #3 University in Germany. After my Bachelors I switched to a Masters of Science program in Informatics / Computer Science at that same University. For the switch I had to take a lot of foundational CS courses which I did, so I'd say I already have a solid CS grounding, almost a full bachelors. I am still in my 1st year of the masters (about 25% of the way through). Concretely, this means I need at least about 1.5 more years to finish it.

I dread the world of academia, I don't wanna become a researcher and really just wanna go full time into software enginnering at some reputable company and contribute to some interesting project(s).

A bit more about myself: I have gathered 2-3 years of Software Enginnering experience on the side and consider myself a junior software engineer. I think I am a decent developer, always eager to learn, and I feel I am very good at selling my skills to companies as I have a rather high application-to-job-offer-ratio so to say. I guess part of it is that I display a lot of confidence in my abilities outwardly. Moreover, I'd say I have a pretty entrepreneurial mindset. I wanna create stuff on my own but feel like I never have the money to invest in anything as I currently don't work, being a full time student.

About my performance at university: I am proud to say I never had to repeat a single exam, but I also usually don't pass with "flying colors" - I kind of always aim for a max result with min effort. And I sort of figured it out: I typically study in a very time-efficient manner and focussed on simply passing, and it always worked so far. The rest of my time I use on personal software projects that I'm 10x more excited about. The downside is I don't learn too much practical knowledge anymore at Uni. A lot of the stuff there I consider academic acrobatics that I'm not interested in.

Here is the problem though: I am and want to be a software engineer, but if I drop out now my only degree will be in electrical engineering and NOT computer science. So I fear that I will never be considered a real software engineer based on my academic title.

I have swayed back and forth multiple times and am currently kind of half-heartedly still doing my courses and everything.

Would it be a good idea to drop out? Again, I frankly hate academic life and love creating stuff NOT for university credits but for an actual purpose. What would people experienced in the field advise me to do?

Thanks a lot