I’d argue that working earlier and having fun are not necessarily mutually exclusive—for example, look at university life. There are a lot of students doing research and other work, while participating in probably the strongest self-discovery of their lives. I also don’t think specialization has a significant impact on what forms of self-discovery someone can engage in—software engineering covers a broad variety of things, from working with people to problem solving to time management to creativity and pitching your work
I’d argue that working earlier and having fun are not necessarily mutually exclusive—for example, look at university life. There are a lot of students doing research and other work, while participating in probably the strongest self-discovery of their lives. I also don’t think specialization has a significant impact on what forms of self-discovery someone can engage in—software engineering covers a broad variety of things, from working with people to problem solving to time management to creativity and pitching your work