Amen brother.
I have seen many a machinist become a programmer on his own.
I went to work in a bindery as a temp doing line labor and ended up as the sole operator and set up man on the most expensive complicated 3 knife trimmer in the shop.
I spent 3 weeks training with an angry east German who kept throwing my tools in the trash because they weren’t “minimeters”. I didn’t feel like I learned anything but when he left I was amazed to realize that I knew that machine inside and out.