I spent the first decade of my career in that industry, working on the hardware and software inside parking meters. It gave me invaluable exposure to embedded

I spent the first decade of my career in that industry, working on the hardware and software inside parking meters. It gave me invaluable exposure to embedded devices, RTOS, electronics, mechanical design, UX, and wired/wireless networking. Everybody else I graduated with in college took tame gov't and enterprise jobs, which would have bored me to tears.