Comment by afavour

Particularly those of us who don't have computer science training kind of end up falling into this stuff.

One of my first jobs was as an admin assistant at a utilities company. We logged data about pipe replacement, which was done in something like five different spreadsheets, each optimized for its printed form (legal requirements for paper copies of various things). I knew just about enough about Access to know that entering the same thing in 5 different spreadsheets is a waste of everyone's time so set up a database where people entered the information once and Access forms generated the five printable versions. Management were impressed and asked me what else I think might be possible. Cue me diving into the world of complex forms, eventually VBA, then once I got frustrated with that, VB.NET via SharpDevelop (they sure as hell weren't paying for Visual Studio), on and on. I was doing software engineering while still keeping the job title of admin assistant.

...then I went and got a real engineering job with a real salary.