Great Question !
1.Well , I work for TCS and a normal days starts at around 10:00 AM, mostly with normal project related / non-project related discussions with the team until we join the Agile Stand-Up call (team is distributed across 4+ locations) So we have the call on either VoIP or Video conference sometimes. Where everyone gives status of their work (How much their user stories are completed, challenges they are facing , what they are going to be working on today etc .. normal 2-3 mins per person).
Rest of the day i either write code for the requirement, prepare UTS, checkmarxs, sonar cube issues, other documentation regarding the requirement. Sometimes, if their is some production issue we need to check that also. As the requirement is fixed and we have fixed number of user-stories to work on .. Enough time is left with us (1-2 Hrs). So, i either spend it on Medium or watching some conference videos on Safari / youtube / lynda .
2.From education perceptive , i have done B.Tech in CS as most of the engineers in India do :P . I have a lot of interest in programming so everything is self taught apart from the little networking , ds algo's i have learned in college.
Current Tech Stack : Java, Spring, Spring Data, Postgre, Angular JS.
I love to work on these (Part time) : React, Node, PHP, Angular, MongoDB
3.I currently live in a tier 3 city and their are little to no tech conferences. So, never got chances to attend them. However, i love conferences and watch them regularly (JsConf, hasGeek, FrontEndTrends , Google developers Conf, Oreilly conferences). I'm planning to move to Silicon valley of India :D.
4.My advice to people moving into tech. Learn as much as you can their is no end. Self learning is the best and don't rely on someone to teach you or force you to learn something new. Watch conferences they really helps to enlarge your perspective thinking and keep you on track with the changing technology world. Try to work on side projects (Personal / Freelance dosen't matter) they will help you to speedup development of your skills.