No formal education in IT, I’m a GI surgeon.

I built my own gaming pc’s in mid-late 00s and i also knew some basic html just by the virtue of being on the internet as a kid and trolling at bulletin boards/trying to build some websites.

In 2018 i was miserable as a GP after finishing my medical decree. I was thinking about changing careers and I did most of the online version of Harwards CS50 course for fun. In the end i did become a surgeon and not an engineer.

In 2025 Trump II happened and seeing that the tech billionaires were in on it, I lost faith in the USA as a country. I wanted to get off all of my subscriptions and american big tech services, which I’m happy to say ive almost completely achieved. As i was searching for the best replacements for all the services I realized the cleanest and most future-proof path is to host my own.

I run nextcloud, immich, jellyfin, matrix, home assistant, paperless, ollama etc etc. There’s still a whatsapp account unfortunately. It is mirrored to my matrix instance so the (grapheneOS) phone i use daily doesnt have a whatsapp client but a matrix client instead. Nothing is happening on the phone whatsapp runs on.

You write “participate” which sounds like a free choise, but I don’t do it out of my own free will. I do it because the web is so enshittified, that it forces me to selfhost more and more of my own websites that only I use.

I fucking hate doing any devops. I think it’s the most boring, soul sucking task there is. Fucking yamls and .env and config files in different places for every app with it’s own syntax.

I tried passing it to an LLM but it’s always subtly wrong, so in the end I still have to read everything, correct everything, generate keypairs, configure something on each client etc.

Every day a million bots are hammering my services, so I have to run crowdsec and fail2ban and make sure there are no ways in, everything is behind a login, up to date, constant manual migrations to newer versions cause one of my hunders of apps always has a breaking change.

I’ve written more devops and security related stuff on my CV than my carreer programming experience. I got a job because now I am not just a fullstack developer, but a fuller stack devsecops-veloper. Showing my homelab and docker setup during a fucking java + react interview landed an immediate yes at the wage that I wished.

I fucking hate devops. Now I have to do it in my free time and at my job. Why does the world force me into devops? Please take it away. Let somebody else handle it. I want to enjoy my life again.

/notsarcasm

Bachelor of science in molecular biology here. Never had any computer/programming courses, not even in college. I come from a 3rd world country, so our “computer lab” naturally had two desktops that we were only allowed on for half an hour a week for basic windows tasks. I’ve always been a curious person, though. Moved to the US in 2010 and started messing around with a laptop I had that was struggling to run windows. Ran into this thing called “Linux” and the rest is history.

I’ve had countless sleepless nights fixing things on my broken Linux installs and/or to make some things work. That is the thing that built what I know now.

Being the same curious dude I am, I wanted to dip my toes into self-hosting, and I just discovered that it’s just a whole new world that is even more fun. Been doing things in this realm for around 1.5 years now and still dabbling.

Edit: forgot to mention that I now work as a software developer at a big company. Yes, my microbiology degree is sitting in the drawer sleeping. lol

Yes, all self taught. I do some script writing in my job but it’s mostly mechanical engineering. I’ve had lots of people assume I work in IT.

I have no training. Moved to Linux when W10 came out, and just organically got to self hosting

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 had no formal training in hosting when I started. What got me started was, dating myself, blockbuster going out of business and getting over 1000 dvds over the course of their downfall and wanting a better way to watch a movie than going thru a big binder. Found Plex eventually, then built a server from an old workstation and a couple hdds. Then docker and automation, that did get me in the door for my current kubernetes job, now I’m starting to get kubernetes setup at home with 3 mini PCs.

I was enrolled in community college for computer science around '08-'09. I completed Visual Basic and C++ intro courses in before switching to mechanical engineering, which is now my field of employment. I built a Windows Media Center HTPC with a tuner card during my community college years. That HTPC evolved over time, and eventually Microsoft killed WMC. I tried Plex TV recording, but that sucked balls compared to WMC. The latest incarnation of that computer runs TrueNAS, and I’m not really doing much with it beyond self-hosting media, but I have a Mint VM installed and set up for a Valheim dedicated server in anticipation of the 1.0 release next month. I might eventually move Home Assistant off a Pi into my TrueNAS, but it hasn’t been high-priority.

Yes, I’m a geologist by education and career. I self-host a few different services but keep them all on my LAN. Setting up Netbird is on my to-do list, but I’m simply not confident enough in the network security aspects to expose anything outside of a VPN tunnel.

No IT formal education, training, career or any job here. I’m an accountant by day and this is all a hobby for me, allowing me to save on subscriptions and having complete control of my family’s data

No major formal education. Did a DOS class at a local Community College back in the day, only did it for the certificate and made my high school pay for it. I already knew how to do everything they were walking me through anyway, I only showed up a couple days per week to drop stuff off.

The instructor made a big deal one of the last days. He stood near this whiteboard and said, “I’m ashamed, I’m appalled, out of everyone in this class, a high school student has the highest grade.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I learned DOS from the DOS Manual when I was 15. I learned how to do some very basic graphic programming and such when I was in elementary school on an Apple II.

I have worked as a network tech and pc repair tech for a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) helped shoot 2.4Ghz WiFi connections up to 8.5 miles and shot a connection 7.6 miles myself. Most of the network troubleshooting was running multiple ping’s to different equipment to watch for issues. Learned on the job how to weatherproof connections using electrical tape and butyl rubber tape. It’s also where I learned how to crimp cables from the installer we had.

Most of the job was cleaning up and checking CPE’s that came in from previous installs, configuring the CPE’s for upcoming installations, and dealing with the phones. The owner was working for another company in IT about 3 hours away. I eventually quit when I was stuck trying to train a new installer and needed help with an issue, the owner quit answering the phone.

I later managed an in house ISP for an apartment building that was converted from a hotel built in the 50’s. I brought in 4 different connections, one from a small local WISP using the building as a tower 6Mbps, two AT&T 3Mbps DSL lines, and a cable modem 6Mbps. And provided internet for about 30 apartments using HPNA. Tried getting the owner to change some things but he was off the thought that if it works don’t fix it. Most people only got between 750Kbps to 1Mbps due to line quality and the technology.

That’s me. I don’t regret not pursuing a career though because my achievements don’t make me feel accomplished. When I get a service running I mostly feel relieved. But, I want the things self hosting provides, so I do the work self hosting demands.

I have no formal training except 1 single year of a trade school where i learnt a bit of pascal and c++. But i have been in front of computers since my earliest childhood starting with ataris in the early 80, C64, Amiga 500, and then starting from 286 across every major consumer x86/x64 CPU architecture. All I know except logic and programming basics are self taught, i never worked in the field outside of giving tech support for ISP clients a.k.a help grandma configure her mailaccount or help someone reinstall their modem driver.

No formal training only help from self hosting community 🤟

The only formal training I had was 20 years ago in high school when I took a pair of A+ and Networking certification electives. At the time I wanted to get into Systems Administration as a career, but no one was hiring when I graduated. Went into trucking instead.

20 years on though, I don’t really consider selfhosting a hobby, but rather the most cost effective way to achieve whatever I’m trying to accomplish for my family or myself. SAAS and subscriptions have kinda gotten out of hand, so I’ve “voted with my wallet” and just done them myself.

Mostly. I pay for email. That was a pain in the ass.

Do I still enjoy it, sure. But that’s has become secondary as my objectives have shifted over the years.