[Foober223]

> honest analysis

An honest comparison can't be made unless he gives up some details of what he's made throughout his life, and his geographic location for fair salary comparisons.

But... from a glance his outcome blows most college grads out of the water. Even compared to comp sci grads with good outcomes.

He was earning income at age 13 and full time income at age 16. The traditional school/college route will have you start work at maybe age 23. With debt.

For most geographic areas in the US, 150k is a serious salary, the apex. It would be hard to increase with paper/certs/degrees. Geography change may be the only reliable way to bump it, but then you'd have to subtract the increased housing costs (million dollar shacks) to compare.

[garden_hermit]

The counterfactual is still useful to think about, because what works for the poster may not work for the modal person. There is a big self-selection problem—if the poster wasn't a successful software engineer, we wouldn't be hearing about their life on an HN post. We are also engaging with their comment, because they are exceptionl and have an interesting life story—who read this article but didn't comment? And whose comments were ignored because their story was less interesting?

This person is clearly successful, but the question is whether their unique schooling experience was causal to their success, and we honestly have no idea. This person may have been equally, or maybe even more successful had they did typical schooling and college. Or maybe not. We also don't know if this person's experience translates to other children—does everyone benefit? Or are there hundreds of less successful unschooled children for every one success?