I gave away some broken tools on Craigslist once and had a similar experience. 2 people showed up really happy, one was entitled. Didn’t really scare me off though.
Leadership is about getting people from point a to point b. Generally to do that you need trust, a good idea of where point a,b are, and what the path between them looks like.
Age is a component of trust, but only a small one and very dependent on the situation.
If you want to be leading someone who has more experience than you, best be sure you have trust and a rock solid understanding of the path you need to be on.
Just saying a 5V device had no problem interpreting -12 as 0 and +12 as 1 (wayyyy out of specs). And the serial port accepted 5 as good as +12 and 0V as -12V. No level shifting.
Did require inverting in code since RS232 uses -12V as logic 1 and +12 as 0.
I live in Montana, have a degree in an unrelated field but still work on IOT projects.
I work mostly from home or private office and have never needed to drive for course of work.
Not sure how you exist in Montana without driving.
If you’d like to move into that field, it’s certainly not easy but it is possible.