Chip in
I got a decent apprenticeship at 17 with a US blue chip. We had to do an Electronics & Electrical qualification at a tech college one day a week for four years, and then another year Software Engineering. Like someone previously mentioned if you are competent in various machine code then C is a squoosh. We were one of three major companies on the one campus, with scores of wee supporting companies, so if you need a PCB you'd just walk over to the PCB firm.
Learned more at work than in college as my colleagues knew far more than the lecturers, but also techs would teach you stuff like soldering a 1cm cube of wire - which seemed pointless but taught you not to over heat and cause a dry joint.
One career high was designing a high speed board CERN bought but my name wasn't on the patent because I was a teenager.
Apprentices were rotated around departments. I remember I fixed eight boards in the test department and the tech there knocked me out - I thought he'd be impressed but he said, "You've just passing through, we have to work here and you're making us look bad." So next day I only fixed four.
I hated the clean room because I had to clean out the tanks of trichlotoethylene, deadly stuff, - without protective gear - plus the female operators were just so course and loved to make me blush. I had fun with the liquid nitrogen but again, no protective gear. I made a snowman that lasted until summer.
Things started to go downhill with surface mount components, pgas and asics. Fault-finding to component level went out the window, they'd just throw away the board and replace it because it was cheaper. How is that cheaper? "Because we soon won't have to employ you!"
They made me - my whole division - redundant on the day of my fifth year. I was a bit shocked because I was brilliant, had sailed through the apprenticeship, our R&D division had just made it's first million pound profit so I'd cancelled my mortgage insurance. Do I get the 5 year £500 bonus? No. Can I at least get the company tie-pin? No.
The big companies started moving out to the far east, their support companies went burst, and for a while I was jumping from sinking ship to life-raft to flotsam.
Then I went into computing, which still had plenty of jobs, was better paid and was far easier. No offence!
Some of the senior engineers started up their own companies but they all hit the same problem - they were working class so couldn't get investment here. Many of them moved to the US.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
