This is an interesting topic of discussion for me and, since I'm at work and want to keep this job, I won't go on too much about it.
The short version is this: I worked as a mechanical design engineer for about 7 years in some fashion or another; I designed robots for FIRST teams for another three years before that. Nearly everything I knew about mechanical design when I first started was a result of my time spent on FIRST teams.
I have worked on a LOT of different projects with a lot of different companies. For some of that 7 years, I was working as an independent contractor and consultant so I could schedule around FIRST stuff, but that grows wearisome and as I got older, I began to value financial security more highly. In some cases, I found that I enjoyed FIRST more than my job and so I wasn't as engaged in my paying work. That's bad; don't let that happen. Sometimes my employers were understanding, sometimes they weren't. My last job as a mechanical design engineer ended in October 2011 when I was laid off (for the fifth time in my short career) from a company I quite liked.
I started to learn a new skillset -- programming -- and have been working as a software engineer for about two months now. I'm a contractor for now since I'm VERY new to the field, but I really enjoy it. This season has been hard because I've needed to prioritize my job higher than my team. There have been growing pains, but the team pulled together to get everything done. We'll see how things go in San Antonio this weekend.
I've been doing this for 14 years and this season was the FIRST that I felt like I could look out for what was best for me and for my life instead of giving back to FIRST. I am tremendously appreciative of the opportunities its afforded me and the skills I learned, but eventually, it's time to move on and let someone else take advantage of those same roles.