Mark, didn't you learn from professional trader? The guy is asking - "Is it a good idea to start as a trading assistant in a firm instead of doing it on my own? "
sorry i thought he was asking about just trading at home vs from a office full of traders. i think it's pretty hard to start out alone and be completely self taught. the more you mingle the more you learn, i have always said everyone needs to work with or for someone when they first start out.
Age has nothing to do with bad habits. Adding to losing positions, taking small profits and big losses, not having a viable trading strategy, crappy work ethic, conflating back tested results with real world market expectations... there is no age limit on bad trading habits.
It might be possible that you do not realize what a huge "get" it would be to get hired on at a bonafide serious futures proprietary trading firm (like DRW or Geneva or Jump to name a few). Typically an entry level position there would be on the software engineering or coding side. MBA's are meaningless to them - they like the hard sciences. They don't hire 'trading assistants' per se. And when they recruit it's usually from a very Tier One campus like MIT, U of Chicago, Stanford.
I think you may find this interesting. Not as good as it used to be, but I don't think you can ever get to this level by going at it alone.