Does anyone else here participate in the selfhosting hobby without a formal IT related education or a career in a similar field? I’ve only had one or two programming courses as part of my university education, but it was only very basic Python and C. I’ve never formally learned how to use containers, version control or anything else. Sometimes I regret not pursuing an education in IT/programming because there are so many things I’d like to accomplish but can’t (for example if there’s a feature missing in some project, or to feel safe in my abilities to harden my servers and my network in order to expose services to the open internet).
I’m from a social work background. Psych major.
Computer stuff was always a hobby.
Starting to mess around with selfhosting, no IT background but grew up on computers.
Ah, self-taught. The slowest, most difficult way.
…hm, knee jerked a little, but you are right, it is a slow and difficult route. Perhaps sometimes also the most thorough, surprising, or rewarding way ? not sure tbh…
It has certainly been a slow start lol.
I was that guy. And then ended up with that career partly because of it.
I’m a social worker. I have yet to find another in my field who does this, but I’m always searching. When I find them, I’ll form a joint practice with them. With our powers combined we will take over the world.
I’m not a social worker, but I am interested in world domination. Can I join?
Honestly, if someone’s gotta control the world, I’d much prefer if it’s a social worker…
Pls write in ruuster13 on your ballot this November thank u. And let’s all agree to forget Kyrsten Sinema happened.
I professionally work in IT without formal education or any related career. It’s one field where you can really teach everything yourself with free online resources.
In fact my self hosting journey has taught me things that were later useful for work. I consider it part of my informal education.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters ISP Internet Service Provider LAMP Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP stack for webhosting NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package VPN Virtual Private Network
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Does anyone else here participate in the selfhosting hobby without a formal IT related education or a career in a similar field?
Yes.
Sometimes I regret not pursuing an education in IT/programming
I’ve thought the same for most of my life, but right now, not so much. All of my friends in the field are being laid off.
I’ve managed to land on my feet with a new career that’s not related to IT but yes it’s a blood bath right now.
Just got done studying for an AWS cert required for my job. It was 150 bucks and an absolute waste of my time. Do not envy us.
I’m a welder-turned-health and safety manager. What I’m learning from self-hosting I’m using to make our h&s reporting more efficient than it was before.
I’ve been in film/television/video production my entire career. It’s a creative field that also relies heavily on ever-changing technology, so I’m not too outside of a tech field. But I’ve always been a geek. Eventually the enshittification comes for us all, and I said, fuck this, I’ll just figure out my own music server. Then, I’m gonna support the right to repair (Framework). I’ll use Linux, I’ll focus on privacy. And then it snowballed…and now I’m just the meat bag that keeps the 42U rack in my basement working :)
Closest thing I have to a formal education in IT is taking keyboarding, QB, then VB in high school in the early 00s. The only thing I came away with from that was the basic concepts; variables, integers, strings, loops, functions, recursion, etc. I remember nearly nothing about VB. Self taught some Python after that, went to Linux and started learning Bash, CLI tooling, editing confs, working on small portions of languages I didn’t know like Haskell (Xmonad) and eLisp (emacs), running containers… Long enough ago I remember manually setting up Apache and MySQL a few times, editing whatever init system I was using to ensure they started, etc.
Time and cost are big determining factors. Sometimes I’d like to know more but never enough to become indebted to educational bills for something I’m not making a career out of. Same reason I can install, remove, rekey and pick various locks, and have installed some access control stuff in the past under an employer, but I’m not shelling out to become licensed Locksmith or Security Systems Technician myself. Tools are comparatively inexpensive, and I have many from past employment, and YouTube is still free and archiveable… add in a bit of “dorking” to find manuals and whatnot and self-teaching just makes more sense for me. Same reasons I’m entering my shade tree mechanic arc these days - it’s not worth paying to become an auto tech but it is worth saving thousands on the repairs I can do. Plus it’s just fun to learn and work with my hands.
Yes. I have no education at all in IT. I have a masters in classical double bass and a career as a musician, working in an opera house now. Computers have always been a hobby and was my second choice for “life path”. Could have easily been the other way around, professional nerd and amateur musician. I am very happy as is, though.
Yeah, my education is in electrical engineering and industrial automation. I’ve grown up using computers and like to learn, but I’ve never had any formal education on the subject except for high school programming classes, an intro CS course using Scheme, and a Python 3 bootcamp on Udemy. Everything else that I know is just from hands-on experience and using a search engine.
For hosting services and managing my domain, only a basic understanding is necessary, so I don’t feel held back by it. I do wish that I could contribute to my favourite projects, though.
Sysadmin here. I’ve been responsible for huuge systems, and been on call.
I’m just lurking. I have a VPS but I happily don’t have any servers at home to maintain
I don’t have any training or schooling in it, at all, I just enjoy computers since I was young 🤷♂️
I have my academic bachelors in CS and I’m doing a civil engineering masters on the CS track. So I’m the opposite of your target audience, but I did want to mention something.
Yes there are some fairly technical things like cryptography, natural language processing, and compression algorithms where you will need a good understanding of mathematical subjects like linear algebra, statistics, and group theory.
But apart from subjects like that, you can definitely learn most of what we did at the same pace, or even faster (and even then, something being difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible to learn). You can easily find good resources online to learn languages from Haskell to C. Nobody is stopping you from buying books that are used as course material. Same goes for networking.
Saying all that, I never even learned to work with containers or VMs as part of a uni course. Most of the stuff we learn is in the realm of theoretical computer science. So I probably learned a lot about self hosting the same way you did: the internet and some friends.
