Well, the point is they aren't going against rules for the sake of breaking the rules, nor to show anyone anything. The closest they come to that is the attempt

Well, the point is they aren't going against rules for the sake of breaking the rules, nor to show anyone anything. The closest they come to that is the attempt to game the rules (I've seen several instances of that). I'd wager that's hacking and not rebellion. And yes, I've been left to my own devices as a kid, and I got used to dealing with things by myself. It's fine after a while, and I'm glad I learned it by the time I was 13 instead of learning it with 33. Regarding their jobs, I'll just list them by their initals. A. Promoting, Organizer, Black Hat SEO for a while. B. Freelance Computer Repair, programs PHP. Wants to build a business once he's 18. D. Computer Sales "Afilliate" proably hits it closest. Then some other gigs he didn't (want to) tell me about. D. Drug Dealing, lower-mid distribution chain. He did it in highschool because it was easy money. J. Marketing in an ad-agency, and for some reason he quit biomed to become carpenter. J is an outlier. I have to say though that only 3 of them are Americans. On self esteem, I've spent considerable time with this group, and I'm relatively sure that they've got high self esteem, regardless of whether they were marketing or not. It's generally hard to judge a persons self esteem acurately. You can generally guess it after spending some time with the person, seeing such things as their general confidence (which is expressed through body language more than you might think), and how they react when encountering opportunities and obstacles.