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).
IT started as a hobby for me. My initial career was digital art/design. When I was 12/13 my dad let me have a pc, that I had to build from a box of scraps he got from work. I kept adding/upgrading that pc until windows pissed me off. Years later I kept it up on ppc and Intel Macs, when I started college. (No degree at all, went to a fancy art school and they ended up killing my program, so I just got a job instead)
I pretty much got my current job by already running a few various servers at home on arm boards and a NAS, helping with basic o365 admin tasks, and being able to crack open/max out the MacPro6,1s at work. I was only supposed to resize art files lol By the time we named a CTO, he just straight up asked me to run IT for him.