If they're unlucky, the gap converges to zero because they get used to not having to do much work, "fail upwards" because of the raw intelligence, and then can't keep up when surrounded by similarly intelligent people who actually do the work.

Failing at something you were told you were extremely good at, and hence based your entire identity around, is extremely difficult and demoralizing. Some people can never really recover from that, and AFAIK depression / suicide isn't unheard of.

Definitely not a problem for this particular kid though, "lack of hard work" and "coasting" is evidently not what this person is about.

THe middle scenario is kids that do the work, but stay in their community for economic / political / class / "born in the wrong place" reasons. Their talents are mostly squandered, but they might end up doing something very significant for the communities they're part of.

This used to be extremely common, a medieval peasant or ancient slave would most likely stay in their village, regardless of how much of a genius they were. The modern world made it much less so, and that's something worth celebrating.

The trajectory of everyone ranged from early Facebook employees, a CMU CS PhD, to one literally going to prison for an exploit lol. You can never tell where life will take you.

If they're self-driven like the original author, they'll be good, they not necessarily need the gradient.