In many ways.... that's kinda so. I've either been a place or spent a lot of time with others who have and soaked up the major details voraciously.

I worked for companies that were 'software integrators' (sized between 50 and 200 depending if you counted the guys working off-site at customer sites all the time). I worked in public safety (the dispatch system, mobile gateways, and the mobiles the RCMP and some other PDs around the country, I was developing the software - communications guy - wireless and wired), then military simulation and training (which included weather, navaids, other instruments used by CF Tactical Navigators).

Then I worked on: A small office Private Branch Exchange (your office phone systems, only IP enabled with management software for the secretaries/office admins) with 3Com, a 300K user browser-accessed human resources portal (for Proctor & Gamble), modifying and redeveloping the Canadian Postal point-of sale system for sales to Lebanon, some islands, somewhere in Africa, somewhere in Europe, then working on our national system to back port some of our work for the export version and adding support for charitable donations at the PoS terminals. 

In there somewhere I worked on an MMO platform that did a game for some spy show that Jennifer Garner was in (Alias?) but we also developed Hogwarts and 3D quidditch but the lawyers and the slow pace of progress from Disney, EA, and others tanked it and our little startup then despite JK Rowling loving what we did (the owners had to hang on for another few months or they'd lose their houses, and a month and a half after they let go of the last staff, they did $1.5M in stuff that had been hanging in the pipeline.

I developed a massively multi user gaming system (in this case 'gaming' as in 'gambling') including developing in 6 weeks a tournament system for Slots (don't ever gamble online, they use every dirty trick of human manipulation to obscure the obvious truth -> that the more you spin, the more you on average lose) which the customer's team hadn't managed in 2 years. 

I worked on 3G/4G service provisioning, authentication, authorization, and accounting as well as SNMP network monitoring for Bridgewater Systems (now owned by global powerhouse Amdocs) whose customers were AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, etc. Then we ported that whole system over to Linux from Unix (porting is.... anti-fun) and it went live for 7 million users in India with no significant complaints. 

I did some work on some other smaller projects, but that's the major bits. So I've seen the insides of a lot of large and small companies in tech and adjacent sectors. 

My uni/college crew and tech work includes engineers, astrophysicists, teachers, nurses, religious studies majors now working at high levels of government policy, programmers/developers, trainers (for tech stuff), defense contractors, people who work for un-named agencies in the Canadian government, an RCN Commander who spent time on the ground in Afghanistan and doing Op Planning, a CF Intelligence Major who has worked in training peacekeepers, AFV recognition training, space weather, image analysis, cyberwarfare, etc and who has a medieval history degree and a Master of War Studies, friends who work directly with our agencies that don't like attention, several black belts in multiple martial arts, a founder of a Crypto startup (former CF Communications), two friends that worked on Naval Electronic Signal Measures for the navy,  and others I'm undoubtedly not recalling. 

From the game conventions and mailing lists, before TML, I met and befriended US SF members, a QA guy who has worked for Microsoft and Spotify, a fellow whose latest jobs were nuclear sub and carrier nuclear development and testing, a couple that came from 82n Abn (one went SF, the other went medevac then did 18 in the CG flying SAR), a 4 bar who has been a USCG admiral's aide as well as most other billets for a Pilot before retiring to flying celebrities around in choppers that are like limos, one of the world's top Marine modellers that works for CSIRO in Tasmania, a Aussie infantryman, an 'Interior Ballistics Specialist' for a Swedish arms manufacturer (translate: works on anti-armour weapons), a US Army Ranger, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a writer for games (Wild Talents, other things) and to eat, someone who works in space vehicle sensors and his gear flew on the NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid R-something mission), another that works for NASA - originally managing downsteaming for Hubble, but has been on Messenger and now something new doing command loads (he also climbs mountains and has a guidebook for NY mountains and he and the instrument scientist wrote a wargame), and others I'm sure I'm missing. 

And then all the luminaries on TML who are also quite wonderful and knowledgeable. 

I've soaked up a lot of what I experienced and what I listened to.  I've been blessed to meet so many interesting, decent, educated, experienced and pleasant people. And I've made many I call close friends. 

I am lucky to have so many friends and the Internet brought me about half of them (maybe more if you consider the Net as a big part of my career stream) and the same net brought me my wife and step-daughter.... so I'm pretty darn lucky, despite the troubles. 

Tomb