"Forced"? This is circular logic.
What makes you think they are forced? It seems every one here agrees that teenager want to be treated like adults.
The only reason to think they were forced is if you think they are still children at age 16. You provided yourself as your own counter example, so clearly at 16 you weren't a child.
> but I lacked emotional intelligence, tact, or general maturity to handle more finer problems
This is exactly what I mean by experience. Emotional intelligence and tact (as you put it) doesn't come suddenly when you're 22; it comes with experience. You could very easily be 30 and still lack these things. I would go further and say you are more likely to lack them if your parents keep treating you like a child and prevent you from doing adult stuff and experiencing the world outside of their "protection".
So basically you're saying you was more adept at 16 with dealing with other people, responsibility and money than the vast majority of college grads are in their mid-late 20's. So I'm failing to see your point.
Because of an education you wouldn't have otherwise received you were capable of doing tasks considered vastly beyond your age's observed responsibility level, seemingly even by yourself.
The point you're making applies as much to a 40 year old boss as it does to a 16 year old boss. Leadership is an acquired skill without an age restriction, but people here on HN seem to want to instate an arbitrary age restriction on how they determine "too young" to be a boss. I really don't get why this would be when software and other tech industries are generally youth orientated and seen as ageist.
(And thank god, because the 23-year-old me was both insufferably stupid and didn't know it.)
(Now at least I know it.)
At least we know there's a nonzero probability that your perceived insufferable stupidity is monotonically decreasing. :-)
If you never speak to a child from birth to 4 years old, it will be unable to learn to speak. That part of the brain will simply have not developed. There's no reason to believe that this is not true of all the other skills you mention.
If you had started doing that "supervisory" role 3 years earlier, you would have been great at it by 16. Similarly, most people start doing that sort of thing at 22, so at 22 they are where you were at 16, meaning they were 6 years behind.
I totally disagree on this. There are remarkable physical differences between a 16 yo, and a 28yo.
Your mental capabilities are different, your hormonal level is completely different etc.
Yes, there are cultures or where teens are forced to act as adults to function in society, but that doesn't make them they have the same capabilities as of an adult, be either physical, or emotional/mental.
And, traditionally armies are staffed with 17-20 yo. Do you know why? Because they make better cannon fodder, and more likely to obey orders, take higher risks, which are correlated with the high testosterone levels that teens do have.
(BTW, I am 30, and when I was 16 I was basically acting as supervisor of a team of 12 workers when my family was building the house due to my father having heart problems. Yes, I was good with money, I could negotiate some, tell people what to do to a certain point, but I lacked emotional intelligence, tact, or general maturity to handle more finer problems).