i actually worked in manufacturing. taught myself digital and then worked on repairing the PCBs. that led me to designing test equipment, some of which Atari sold to customers. by the time engineering got interested in me i was making way too much money for what they'd pay for an undegreed engineer. when i quit, i had 400 people reporting to me and took a job as a sole engineer designing test equipment for one of the first grocery laser scanners. all my test equipment employed MPUs--
assembly language in bygone 4 and 8 bit days. finally got tired of burning myself with soldering irons, piercings with wire-wrap posts and started teaching myself high level languages.
once the use of pointers in C finally "clicked", i never looked back and retired as a software VP. (if Sam reads this, i know at least he'll "get" the pointer reference
but the early days were the best. pharmaceuticals mixed with NAND gates can lead to nirvana...