It's not the olympics, you don't have to be the top 100 in the world to matter. I started at about 8yo... professionally at 16 and I'm 32 now. I think worrying

It's not the olympics, you don't have to be the top 100 in the world to matter. I started at about 8yo... professionally at 16 and I'm 32 now. I think worrying about things like this is a proxy for accepting one's own aging and mortality. Starting in my early youth gave me certain advantages, primarily in internalizing the underlying structures but it's the rare exception that has the access and parental support to gain such early life experience. Most of the time, the advantage is in spinning up on new projects - which is a relatively small % of the time spent working on projects. I really think that being industrious will compensate for any advantage very quickly. That being said, some people say it takes 10,000 hours to gain real expertise in a field and starting at 25 makes that more difficult.