I worked at a big tech company in a staff/principal engineering position. I always had coworkers who didn’t start coding until college, who were better engineers, communicators, and overall leaders than I was. I turned to them for mentorship.

For what it’s worth, I learned to code in grade school.

I wasn’t terrible at my job, and left in that principal role.

Not sure how conclusive my anecdote is, but I 100% do not believe there’s a strong relationship with starting to code earlier in life and being a better coder, engineer, or general employee than someone who started in college or even much later in life.