I agree with this. In retrospect, a better path for me would've been (in The Netherlands): - Don't do pre-university in high school but prepare for "higher job

I agree with this. In retrospect, a better path for me would've been (in The Netherlands): - Don't do pre-university in high school but prepare for "higher job education" in high school. Graduate at 17. - Do a "higher job education", speed it up (instead of 4 years do 3 years) and graduate at 20. Do some web dev/UX-based degree (they exist and speedups are possible, provided you're pro-active). - Get a job grind away for 3 to 5 years, learn about investing and invest most of the money. - If you want to go deeper in computer science, because the craft is beautiful then follow a master degree in security. I'd have missed out on a lot of spiritual/some social development that I wouldn't have gotten at "higher job education" but did get at uni (as I did that for 6 months, a different degree though). However, compared to that, I now have a career setback of 7 years.