This. I so agree with this. I was lucky enough to fiddle with computers as a kid, so I kind of knew what I wanted to do, so I had years and years of "play time

This. I so agree with this. I was lucky enough to fiddle with computers as a kid, so I kind of knew what I wanted to do, so I had years and years of "play time" in which I gently and accidentally introduced myself into programming, databases, operating systems, hardware, the web, etc. Often, things that I never thought would be useful turned out to be down the road. I also learned to be more fearless when experimenting and understanding a system - versus it takes some people years to get out of the "afraid to break things" mindset into the mindset of experimentation, trying things out, prototyping, poking things to understand them. I think these are things that the sausage factory modality of education can't really provide, and working in the field will definitely give you this kind of thing too. But the issue I see often is that the self taught or "graduated" (whatever that means) from support folks aren't taken as seriously as a person with a BsC in CS from a "legitimate" engineering school. I /did/ get a formal degree, and it taught me tons (won't comment on the whole is it necessary thing) but I think it would have been way harder for me to get a programming job otherwise even though I probably had adequate skills for an entry level job in many places. I don't think in many places today that someone would consider training a support person to do engineering, for various good and bad reasons, and we need to think hard about providing more long term learning-through-doing and on the job apprenticeships that other craftspeople do.