I assume most users here have some sort of tech/IT/software background. However, I’ve seen some comments of people who might not have that background (no problem with that) and I wonder if you are self-hosting anything, how did you decide that you would like to self-host?
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Former USAF JAG here (lawyer). I was always a tech geek, undergrad major was in MIS actually, but I didn’t enjoy coding. Always ran Plex on the side, built my own computers, etc. Grew up with my Dad using Linux everywhere (I found this annoying as I just wanted to play games on Windows).
I didn’t enjoy law (surprise!). I was disillusioned with the criminal justice system too. Quit the law in 2020. Then suddenly had quality time by global happenstance to rethink my life path.
I work in IT now. Restarted at the bottom of a new career but I’m in deep nerd territory now - Proxmox servers, Home Assistant, networks with VLANs, OPNsense router, 22U server rack, Linux as my daily driver, etc.
Much happier now.
As someone who majored in CS and is now in a software engineering position, the people in tech who come from a completely different field are always my favorite. On top of just proving people wrong about the “right” way to get into the field, they’ve been around, they know how to think about problems from other perspectives, and they’re usually better at working with other people.
Honestly, I think more people should minor in CS, or if they did their undergrad in CS, they should have to do their grad work in something else. The ability to compute things is only useful if you’re well versed in a problem worth computing an answer to, most of which lie outside of CS.
I’m currently doing comp sci but have always debated doing comp eng or ee. However, I don’t want to do comp eng or ee as a career, just more as a side hobby. So I’m sticking with comp sci and I’ll do all the comp eng and ee stuff at home.
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I love unRAID so much. It’s crazy how just a simple GUI can help solidify docker concepts.
Are you me?
Started with running a minecraft realm then it grew to the point greifers became a problem so we needed plug-ins for protection. So that led to having a managed hosted server then a VPS and then finally self hosting
yes! structural engineer here, computers has been my passion for a long time and self hosting is a joy! i have learnt a ton in the past year about networking, security and so many things!
Kinda? My bare bones initial self hosted media streaming setup was put together by my partner. It’s no longer bare bones, because I’ve since upgraded it, added new functionality and I keep it going.
Mechanical engineer here self-hosting my own Lemmy and Pixelfed instances in a Yunohost VM on an old Ubuntu box. It just feels better being my own admin.
Kudos for self-hosting fediverse stuff, man.
Thank you!
I work in emergency management but I’ve always been interested in tech as a hobby. That led me to start self-hosting Plex on my desktop about 6-7 years ago. Now I’ve got a dedicated machine running unraid with about 20 to 30 different docker services.
I really enjoy being able to figure out how to setup a service and then being able to be fully in control of how it works. Beyond just enjoying tinkering with the system to learn, I enjoy being able to troubleshoot and fix problems without relying on large companies.
If plex counts… Then also me. I work in retail. I can’t escape. I have a degree in tech, but not enough work experience.
Self hosting is your pathway to a tech background.
University for comp sci, in my experience around the space, is a complete waste of time. Just a piece of paper that may or may not equip the recipient with some skills that may or may not be relevant.
University is ok if you’re starting at zero and don’t even know what’s out there. It’s for exposing students to a a breadth of topics and some rationale of why things are as they are, but not necessarily for plugging them into a production environment.
Nothing beats having your own real world project, either for motivation or exposure to cutting edge methods. Universities have tried to replicate that with things like ‘problem based learning,’ and they probably hope that students will be inspired by one or two of the classes to start their own out-of-class project, but school and work are fundamentally different ways of learning with fundamentally different goals.
My one and only reason is that I’m a turbo-nerd. No professional or even educational tech background at all.
Same been using computers my whole life so self hosting was just gonna be apart of it.
I clean construction site toilets. I wanted to run my own game and media severs and ended up with a Dell Poweredge, a synology 1u NAS and some ubiquity gear
I work in logistics. I’ve always had a fascination with tech, and was leery of all these neato things on offer from big tech, from social media to the cloud.
Found out I could self-host, and got to learning.
I started self-hosting a music server locally on a Raspberry Pi long before I switched careers to go into IT. I actually learned a lot that way.
When they were installing the alarm at my house I noticed that the main guy had nextcloud on his phone and it sparked a nice conversation about privacy. He has no technical background but managed to self-host it on his old laptop with one of those distros that have an easy UI for self-hosting (don’t remember which one exactly). He’s a pretty cool guy.
Proxmox or Unraid?
I believe that most self holsters actually are more hobbyist lifestyle than people with actual tech background.
I read and research a whole lot, which has taken me down this rabbit hole.
Nope, I work in STEM but not IT nor software.
I’m a serial hobbyist and actively pursue projects outside the scope of my job and education background.
