[giaour]

I had an office job that involved a lot of spreadsheets and some Access databases, and I taught myself how to script a good chunk of my day-to-day responsibilities. I used the resulting spare time to learn more, automated additional tasks, and eventually found myself spending the majority of the day writing and maintaining code. When it was time to look for a new job, I was able to get a position as a software engineer based on the skills I had acquired and the programming projects I had completed and deployed.