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.
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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.
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 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.
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!
Grats on the win!!
I wish I could have been the one to snag you up. I learned on my own, and I respect the process.
Pushing through the frustration when setting up was worthy 🙌. Im glad for you!
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!!
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
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.
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.
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.
