A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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We welcome posts that include suggestions for good self-hosted alternatives to popular online services, how they are better, or how they give back control of your data. Also include hints and tips for less technical readers.
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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.
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'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.
I'm doing a lot of tech interviews for my company. Whenever there's someone with a homelab I can be 80% sure they have a lot of knowledge in their respective homelab ecosystem (vms/Kubernetes/containers/etc.) and absolutely no problem adapting to new ones. Plus usually some good networking knowledge.
I have a K8s Cluster at home too - it's not only a great Icebreaker but also a great way to see which technologies the other person has worked with.
One of my coworkers always tells people "Just start with a Plex/media server" and it grows from there. It's worked for at least four of us who work on our team and I'd say we're all doing some cool things now. Good luck friend! Keep labbing
Basically same for me. Didn't do this stuff in my last job (95% of the time) I'm doing now and speaking about my homelab really helped sell my interest and learning abilities in the job interview.
Showing interest in tech or programming was always the number one hiring criteria for me.
IT is so a fast changing job that you want to keep up just with your job alone, so if your company wants innovation they need people that do stuff like this in their free time.
This doubly applies for people fresh out of school, cause honestly you don't learn nearly enough to do the job there. So every little extra gives you a lead against your concurrence.
"Tell me about your IT setup at home" is my favourite interview question, followed up with "And what are you planning next?". I've been using it for years now, and it's been an excellent assessment every time.
It lets people talk about a technical area that they're super-familiar with, and also lets them show how they think about planning/purchasing/budgeting. It's also weeded out people who really aren't at all interested in computers - this is fine for some roles, but for most, I want someone technically-focused.
I wish I could have been the one to snag you up. I learned on my own, and I respect the process.
Anyway, this is barely worthy of a post, but I'm really excited.
As well you should be! Also, I think it's very worthy of a post. You put in the work, and even though it was "only" a home lab environment, it has given you real-world applicable skills. Good on ya!
Congrats! Absolutely worth posting you silly goose. They'll appreciate your self starter can do attitude. I personally would put someone with a personal projects solely to sharpen their skills at the top of my list.
That’s how I got my first job for sure.
I once interviewed a person and spent more than half the time talking about his homelab although it wasn't directly relevant to the job. Ended up hiring him as well. In my mind, the willingness to self-learn and tinker is an asset.
Grats on the win!!
Companies love someone who spends their free time learning skills that benefit them.
I've always made sure to mention my personal interest and the last few years my full-server rack at least a short summary.
It's gotten my foot in the door quite often when talking to managers with some IT knowledge; ones that don't have any I wouldn't want to work with anyways.
Good luck at your new job OP!
And don't listen to the disgruntled old-timers that say you'll stop exploring in your free time, they're just jealous and/or have kids with very little free time left.
And don't listen to the disgruntled old-timers that say you'll stop exploring in your free time, they're just jealous and/or have kids with very little free time left.
Fuck that. I am in my 40's and still messing around with my lab and stuff in my free time...and at work. The want to learn never stops if you like what you are doing.
Congratulations nice! I run a homelab server too running about 15 services, apps and sites I programmed/designed, and free software like Plex! I just enjoy it, I also have AI pipelines for like stable diffusion and rvc ,
I think the hard part of home lab is scaling and designing/organizing your files and infrastructure. I literally have a monorepo with submodules of projects all of which are connected meticulously using containerization like docker, pods, etc . I'm able to bring up websites quickly like to the Internet in production as well. it's crazy. I used to pay for a VPS, and use control panel, etc, waste of money xD
homelab is great, but time consuming and learning curve
Ask lot's of questions.
Volunteer to do everything even if you don't know how to do it.
Never underestimate how valuable "showing up on time" is.
I landed a job also just off my homelab. Well sitting in the interview I setup an account for the guy, got him accessed in and let him look at everything I did and could do. You would be amazed how much better it is to be able to show you can do a job then just try to tell someone you can.
Also it's a huge thing to show a willingness and gift for self learning, a lot of people do not have that. When you find someone like that even if the skills are raw you know that person can be turned into something great.
lol, I don't have lexdysia, but I read your subject line as "Selfghosting got me a job offer" and I was wondering how you stopped responding to your own emails/calls to get a job!!
Congratulations. That is amazing!! What type of job is it? If you don't mind sharing.
It’s all about motivation.
I can simply guarantee you that, you know a lot more than professional DevOps guy from India 😂
I've got my job years ago because of my (selfhosted) project. That's a great start!
Talking about self hosting worked for me thirty years ago. Been a great career all in all.
Hey man it’s how I got into my position where I’m at now, all self taught. I started just as help desks, then the place I worked for had an opening and a Lab technology specialist, which I knew nothing about anything in that field. But in the interview talking about all my home lab projects and goals and just general love for tech. Next thing I knew a week later got a nice pay bump with a promise in a way bigger one if I make it a year. Well now I design PCB and work of very custom hardware and software and it’s all still mine blowing to me.
Anyway, this is barely worthy of a post,
Shut up! This is always worth a post! We do this because we enjoy it. Not because we seek fame. Good on you for getting the job. Just keep learning and growing.
A word of advice for any one else and any future endeavors. Put your lab at the bottom of your resume. 10 year or 20 years in the game, I don't care. Put it on there. Give the highlights and you are good. So far it has gotten me two jobs.
upvote for good post
Congrats. Welcome to the IT arena.
I always tell people trying to learn IT/systems engineering. Tinker but treat your Lab like a pseudo prod.
Document all your changes and all your methods. Keep it on a USB for interviews, Web site and in a PowerPoint.
Congratulations! Happy you got this.
Document all your changes and all your methods
My friends joke with me that my notebook looks like a methwizards spell book from all the notes and notes on notes and dog eared notes. Nothing like having something fail two times and then work the third and you got no idea why unless you wrote down everything.
Something a lot of people don’t get it that regionally, you graduate with hundreds or even thousands of others at the same time. It’s not the schoolwork, everyone graduating has it. It’s what sets you apart.
If you haven’t done internships, no personal projects, or if you haven’t built anything, you’re just another one among many. Doing these things makes you different and highlights what you can do and what you wanna do and your drive to try something, figure it out, and see it through.
When looking through resumes, skills is one thing and goes into one pile. Then that pile gets shorter based on what else you bring.
Languages and I deal with international offices? Exchange courses abroad and I need someone who understands that different places have different customs? We deal with things that change often and you have a home lab and have figured things out? Took programming classes and we have things automated or need to automate?
I can teach the stack to people or idiosyncrasies. Teaching the above takes wanting to do it and also shows if you want something, you figure it out. We know these things aren’t taught in school.
#Congrats OP!
I read "selfghosting" at first and thought this post was made in r/recruitinghell .. Yeah.. Well..
Glad it worked out so well for you though!
Many of us in IT have similar starts with our interests overlapping with our career goals. My one piece of advice is to be careful about work/life balance. I’ve done a lot of “work” stuff at home over the years without getting compensated for it. Use your homelab for your projects. The skills will transfer over, but let the work projects stay on work hardware.
When I interview entry-level IT operations candidates, discussion of home labs puts the candidate at the top of the list, all other things being equal. It's hands-on experience and demonstrates an interest in tinkering... and will show that the candidate knows how to solve problems (including how to Google problems).
Only once has that strategy failed me, and it wasn't even a terrible fit - just a bad one.
Almost every technical skill I have has come through making it work at home. Yes, my home environment is ridiculously over-engineered, but I now run my own MSP business 😊
this is barely worthy of a post
I strongly disagree. This is really awesome and I'm pretty sure a lot of us would not mind getting a job because we dabble in servers as a hobby. Congratulations!!
Which company use Proxmox? Bring me too. All I give job application they say VMWare and never heard of Proxmox
Not many I know of use it but they at least know what it is. However saying yes I understand how a type 1 hypervisor works is good enough.
I build Proxmox in my last company in cluster. But I don’t have like minded individual to work alongside or I’ve never given free hand to hire someone from *nix background. So I quit.
Pushing through the frustration when setting up was worthy 🙌. Im glad for you!
When I'm interviewing people for any entry level, or even low level sysadmin positions, discussion of a homelab is always on my list of questions. I'm looking for not only the fact it exists, but also the passion you have talking about it. I can work on tech skills, but I can't teach passion.