The thing is if you never do something like building lathes, mills, printers, p&p machines and the like you miss out on a lot of electronics.
I also came in contact quite late but there is a big world of electronics out there: NEC class2 protection modules, safety relais, motor drivers, cossin and quadrature encoders , tens of different proximity sensors, modbus, ethercat, profibus etcetc. A new interesting world