Sorry you're being downvoted. I don't think you're trying to detract from the accomplishment here, but you are raising an important point: at an age like this, good mentorship, leadership, and guidance is essential.

There is a very small number of truly gifted people who end up discovering things on their own at a young age. Most gifted people who discover something do so with the benefit of a mentor who can work with them to refine their talent into skill.

My masters thesis sucked largely because I tried to do it on my own and didn't even pick an advisor until I was almost done. At that point all they could do with my mess was to say "well, this is a decent descriptive paper and we need more descriptive papers in the field," and then give me proofreading comments. I didn't have a damn clue what I was doing, the end product was mediocre, and I didn't learn nearly as much as I could have. I'm not an outstanding talent by any means, but not seeking out mentorship in school is one of my only career-related regrets.

The fact of the matter is that that some people are deprived of mentorship, either through bad personal decision-making or through bad academic infrastructure. These people have a much harder road to expertise and success than the people who were mentored.

Thanks for your comment. This was not to detract from Jeff Dean's work in any way - obviously he is a talented, hard working engineer.

This was more to share with 'halflings that comparing one's achievements to someone else's is rarely something that bears much fruit.

Your replies seem to support downvoted outliers. Is this a no broken windows community moderation effort. If not, great idea.

I had a bitter experience while pursuing my master's thesis at a pretty big firm. The people responsible for advising me were shameless in accepting that no one really cares about how well I have done my thesis (they were trying to defend as to why no one cared enough to spend time and guide me), all that matters is finishing it and moving on. If you happen to be a perfectionist, such experiences break you.