Right out of school for EE (never finished my degree), I was a technician at tech companies in Chatsworth Ca.
I then went into retail management in the audio industry for about a decade. Worked at one of the most high end car audio shops in LA (in Santa Monica) during the heyday of car audio.
Went back to school for IT, when I saw the writing on the wall for car audio.
Now working in IT at Amgen (biotech - AMGEN) in Thousand Oaks, Ca. I work in the labs configuring and troubleshooting the computers and the lab instruments they control (mass specs, titrators, cell counters, DNA sequences, etc). Still no college degree (I got them all fooled😉).
Still don’t make near enough to afford the type of gear I’d like to own. The only reason why my system is quite high end, is due to solid DIY skills.