This is interesting to what extent people really have principled, intentional plans leading them into this field. My own path was convoluted as hell. I was an

This is interesting to what extent people really have principled, intentional plans leading them into this field. My own path was convoluted as hell. I was an Army officer commanding tanks and wanted to become an ORSA and began studying Applied Math to that end. When I moved onto grad school, Computer Science ended up being easier to do because my Colonel told me about Georgia Tech beginning to offer a fully online program identical to their in-residence program. The Army will send you to school, but you owe them two days more in active duty obligation for every day they send you. If you do it remotely, no obligation. So I did it remotely. With a background in Applied Math, I specialized in Machine Learning in grad school, and after that, initially ended up in a hedge fund doing algorithm research. Catastrophic spine injuries sent me into a period of surgeries, pain, downtime, wanting to kill myself, and all in all definitely not working. When I finally came around, my first two offers were with L3 for a pure data analysis role developing some Air Force program doing human movement pattern detection, and with Raytheon in a software engineering role working on ground processing algorithms for satellite imaging. Well, I still couldn't drive thanks to the spine problems, and Raytheon's campus was right next to a train station, so I chose that. So here I am, years later, a software engineer (no longer with Raytheon). I doubt this exact story is prevalent, but a bunch of people I worked with had originally been physicists and electrical engineers. We all got sucked in because software is eating the world and the roles are much more prevalent than other roles. I could have stuck with machine learning but that limits you to a tiny number of huge players that are making any meaningful headway and impact in that space. Sticking with software more generally allows you to work anywhere doing nearly anything.