40 year machinist here....Cut my teeth when I apprenticed as a Tool and Die Maker back in the Eighties in So. Cal ( I ran Surface Grinders, Radial Arm Drills, Shapers and a Bridgeport Mill there), and did that for two years but was already into Hot Rodding and MOPARS.
After T & D, I went to work for a now defunct but significant at the time local manufacturer of Racing Products ("Summers Bros" of Goldenrod Fame) Axles, Spools, Gear Drives, Main Caps, etc and worked there for close to 8 years, ran a cylindrical grinder there doing axle journals and my 1st NC "Numeric Control" (pre-dated CNC) a Leblonde Lathe and later my 1st CNC Lathe, a Hitachi...Pretty cool place for a young man as we supplied axles to Glidden. WJ, Rickey Smith and Reher Morrison all of whom were visitors to the shop.
Later worked for a few different job shops, again running primarily a variety of CNC Lathes and always doing my own G-Code programming...
I then became a Mold Maker building Rubber Molds (Transfer and Compression) where I got my 1st taste of a Mazak CNC Lathe and started programming in Mazatrol which is just a conversational type of programming that gets converted to G-Code in the background..Absolutely Love the Mazaks and prefer them over straight G-Code machines.
I did the Rubber Molds for Ten Years and then moved to Texas and worked in the Oil Patch doing Prototype work for almost 20 years again running a Huge Mazak Powermaster CNC Lathe and some other smaller Mazak CNC Lathes in the unit as well as some Weiler Lathes.
Unfortunately, the Oil Patch job I had hoped to retire from closed their doors in August of last year and now I'm an Older Guy (Very Experienced) but Older and Discrimination is the Real Deal out there.
I started anew again in November of last year and I'm now repairing Plastic Injection Molds for a small local company.. I've got to do it all there from Band Sawing the raw material to running the Engine Lathe, A lot of Surface Grinding on Pins, Plates and Sleeves and Running Bridgeport Mills.......The big change here and a huge learning curve for me is they have 8 CNC Mills and 1 CNC Lathe (all Haas) and all of the programs are created from "Mastercam" software. So I actually have to create a Wireframe model, sometimes 3D and sometimes extruded into a Solid depending on the parts geometry and complexity and then you actually chain to parts of the geometry and it generates a program which you then upload to the machines control.
Pretty elaborate stuff and had to talk myself off the ledge more than once when I 1st started using Mastercam as there are just so many different toolpaths and complexities associated with that it can be very overwhelming when 1st using it but I'm definitely getting better and though I'm at the tail end of my career in all reality if you can become proficient with Mastercam, you can write your own ticket and get a job anywhere getting top wages.