I didn't start as a UX designer. But looking back, I never really stopped doing UX.

In 2014 while studying for my IT degree, I was working at a startup tech company as the front-end developer. No one called it UX back then, but I was walking through factories and manufacturing floors, talking to real users, gathering requirements, shaping solutions, building interfaces, and running tests to make sure everything held up. The title said developer. The work said something else entirely.