Started out when I was eight, I got into electronics. Read all magazines, learned myself how to design electronic circuits from library books. Kept my own, hand written, library card system describing the specs of all transistors, ICs I could get my hands on. Designed/built and repaired devices for other people who paid me for the materials and for my trouble. I was 15. When I was 18 I went to university, switched majors multiple times.
And then the Dutch electronics magazine published the Junior computer, based on the 6502. I spent all my money on it, and learned assembler by inputting hex numbers. After that came the MSX computer (I disassembled the BASIC interpreter to grok how it worked) and I started searching for programmers jobs.
Found a job at KLM where I got out top of the class and entered a special called SMART. For special internal projects. All of us programmed in IBM S370 assembler, they tested C but it was too slow.
I was 25 by then. The following years went downhill. In IT. I changed jobs multiple times, but the companies kept going out of business. I was flabbergasted at the amount of incompetence I saw in salespeople and at C-level. I had no idea, coming from a blue collar background.
Side note: in 4 years I had 9 CEOs, 8 of which left their wife for their secretary in the time I worked there! I had a lot of respect for the 9th until I found out a couple of years later he'd done the same after I left.
So I decided why not start my own business i was capable of going bust as well couldn't do worse as those guys. So I started the first commercial ISP in the NL. One thing led to another and many companies later I now pulled out of most and again starting as a founder and learning all the new hot technologies.