I started coding professionally at 15 (by that I mean a real job making real money for a real, now publicly held, company). I certainly agree that "kids" have v

I started coding professionally at 15 (by that I mean a real job making real money for a real, now publicly held, company). I certainly agree that "kids" have value, but I think there's a concern that rarely gets addressed in these articles: professionalism. I left that company after one month because I found myself utterly unprepared, at 15, to be living cube life. Later on (18), I helped a former boss bootstrap a business around a monitoring package we'd written. He was having difficulties with the business model, was stressed out, and not always the most pleasant person to work for. After an incident on site at a client, I emailed him saying I wouldn't be showing up again. While the situation might have been tense for anyone, this was certainly not the appropriate way of resolving it. Teenagers are often too reactionary to conduct themselves professionally. This is also difficult to assess in a hiring interview, so realize that hiring young is a gamble.