Assuming a decent understanding of assembly on common CPU architectures (eg: x86), how can one explore a potential path (career, fun and profit, etc) into the field of reverse engineering? There is so little educational guides out there so it is difficult to understand what potential uses this has today (eg: is searching for buffer overflow exploits still common, or do stack monitoring programs make this obselete?). I am not looking for any step by step program, just some relevant information such as tips on how to efficiently find a specific area of a program. Basic things in the trade. As well as what it is currently being used for today.

So to recap, what current uses does reverse engineering yield today? And how can one find some basic information on how to learn the trade (again it doesn't have to be step-by-step, just anything which can through a clue would be helpful).