Up 'till last July I was a , err, software engineer. No formal training. The job just developed with me in it. I was already working for the company as they transitioned from analogue technology to digital. A small handful of us just inherited the transition. We hired a computer contractor and installed a huge-azz network built around Sun and Solaris. I had to learn UNIX and get my hands very dirty tweaking the software for our operation. The network had a million remote sites and I was always on the road checking them out.
Now I'm completely out of all that and do amateur real estate investing, equities trading, and of late I'm experimenting with commodities trading. Self taught in investing, no formal training. I spend all day online researching either commercial property, or stocks or commodities. Spend huge amounts of time just reading blogs pertaining to finance/investing/the economy/news, in order to get a good feel for whats going on out in the world.
I'm a big fan of the US stock market and believe its one of the best avenues to wealth for the ordinary person who wants to put in the research.