I still barely believe it honestly. I’m a student “freshly” outta school with no experience, and I’ve been struggling finding a job for a while.
I had an (first) job interview recently and while I didn’t have much to offer, I seemed to somewhat impress them with my home labbing. I run Proxmox at home for my self-hosted things and got a decent amount of experience with it, and it’s what they use a lot as well. It’s not that common in my age group to be interested in stuff like this, apparently.
Anyway, this is barely worthy of a post, but I’m really excited. I don’t really know how it’ll work out as I still got plenty to learn, but it’s a big step forwards for me.
This is the beginning of something great. The time and place where one starts to realize that passion is the true treasure in the sea of hedonism, consumerism, infantilism.
I got my first and only job in the same way as you did, 13 years ago, and I still am and forever will be better than most of my colleagues that just “do their work”.
It’s not “love what you do”, it’s “do what you love”.
My congratulations to you, fellow selfhoster.
I’ve been in this business for ~15 years… Currently Staff level SRE making a very comfortable living. I have no degree. No certs. No professional training of any kind. I got into it because I setup my first Linux box as a teenager in the late 90s and have never been without one ever since.
The lack of credentials really doesn’t affect me at all.
That being said though, I don’t know that I could recommend that path to very many people any more. It’s definitely possible but the world has gotten so much more complicated from when I was coming up. It’s a lot harder if a way in but for the right person it’s great.
Good for you!!
Anyone who has a home lab would be top of my list. It seems normal while being on this sub, but I hardly come across anyone who has one and the skills required to maintain one definite shows in an interview.
I wish I could have been the one to snag you up. I learned on my own, and I respect the process.