This is basically me.

I was in restaurant management in the late '90s, and knew it well, but loved computers and had been teaching myself programming for a while.

My last restaurant job was for a small franchisee, and I moved into IT and support for them after a couple of years (while also doing catering, covering vacations for managers, doing graphics on vehicles and banners, pretty much whatever needed to be done).

In 2001 I went to work for the company that sold us our POS Systems. Originally I did installation, training, and support, but started coding pretty quickly, and after a few years became lead.

I now own all of that software / IP, and my own company.