> You only see top programmers who started as kids and probably won some Olympiads and programming competitions, and this continued in their 20s and maybe kept their skill up till 30s but that's about it. What do they do after that?

I know in mathematics, winning the math olympiad makes someone far more likely to win the Fields medal, but I haven't heard of a similar correlation in programming (e.g. for the Turing award).

I don't see how being a young prodigy gives someone an advantage in most of the programming world.