I own a number of SGIs, lovely machines. In fact, I learned to write C++ a couple years ago by writing a network program that lets you control an IRIX machine that is connected to a capture card, using the mouse and keyboard of a Windows machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOhT0x5m9Nc
Now I am a professional C++ dev. So yes, learning to use this UNIX workstation directly impacted my career.