My working life has always been exactly like this. I'm not sure why, but I always tried to avoid doing tech for a living. Grew up in construction, joined the military, when I got out I was just going to follow in Dad's footsteps and went to finish my journeyman as an electrician. But as the company was growing, the technical and managerial skills were harder to come by and they wanted me to give it a shot. A similar cycle kept happening in every position I've held - facilities management, stationary engineering... once my technical skillset was realized, both the skillset and it's direct skills (development, etc) and the problem solving skills were asked of me to be utilized.

With that, never having a reason to intrinsically develop that sense of solving complex problems is one of the biggest heartbreaks to come along with AI.