I've looked into the first steps of education, and there are a couple different levels one can take
-Learn from Youtubers. Free. This would be for hobby purposes only
-Learn from a tutorial site like
watchfix or
watchrepairtutorials.. These are be about $200-300 and by the end you'd be able to do basic maintenance on 3 handers and then you can go from there
-Distance education from a school like the British Horology Institute. Technician grade 1 year course is about $700, and you can then go there to take an exam to become accredited. They recommend in person lessons to prepare for this. This is the school in the video I posted above, and the technician grade covers the basics and more (for instance you make your own tools)
-In person education like WOSTEP in Switzerland. Tuition is about $20K for the first year service course, or $36K for 2 years watchmaking. I'd need to relocate to Switzerland, find room and board, etc. Unfortunately I failed at having rich parents, so this is kind of out of the question
-Brands have schools with free tuition (Rolex even pays an $1800 per month stipend). Richemont has a school in Hong Kong, I am looking into it (brb deleting all my Panerai shitposts). Obviously this gets you a job immediately as a technician. Rolex says the beginning salary is $70K.
They say no experience is necessary, but you would definitely want to be pretty adept at it before applying. In that case, one of the non accredited methods and a lot of practice may be the way to go. That is if you want to work for a brand rather than do it on your own. Either way, nobody is going to give you the ability to buy parts for yourself.