[jacquesm]

The first five years of my career could be called volunteering. I worked like a demon, got paid peanuts and in return learned lots and made a couple of people very rich. The work I liked most was working with artists on installations. But that paid $0.

Retrospectively, I probably learned more than I would have if I had enrolled in CS at the time and met a lot of interesting and capable people (quite a few of those I'm still in contact with).

Even if a good part of this was probably better termed as abusive relationships instead of volunteering there are few ways in which I could have gotten the exposure to technology that I did. And even if I only supplied the brains they still had to get me the toys to do the work with and those I would not have been able to afford for at least another decade.

So, from an income perspective this was wasted time, but from a learning perspective it was fantastic.