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 learnt basic HTML as a youngling in the 90’s so back before it got very complex, no formal training. I pretended to learn python for my 100 level comp sci in the mid 00’s but completely forgot it after the class was over. I just got into the hobby recently because I did not want to continue paying for stuff but not owning stuff, and it was getting silly expensive for my unlimited free trial hack and personal blog. Plus I wanted to start getting away from big tech, so learning about self hosting from the web and double checking my stuff with Claude really helps.

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.

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.

I have no formal training but have been in IT for over thirty years.

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.

Well, I’ve had a computer in front of me since the 70s. Don’t conflate longevity with knowledge tho. I’ve had no formal training, even tho I ‘ran’ the IT dept for a small construction company in another life. One of my jobs was to train old head construction workers on how to use a lap top, a digital camera, how to interface with our servers to upload data from the field. That was wild.

But, no formal training here. Most of what I know I learned by: Reading, screwing it up, doing it again, ad nauseam. And then when something worked, write that shit down.

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.

Professionally, I’m a teacher in a subject area totally unrelated to IT. My only formal training was a high-school program that taught me networking (in the days before wifi was common), and an intro to C++ course during college. Everything I’ve learned since has been piecemeal and self-taught. I’m forever grateful to those with the proper training who write up guides, answer questions, and generally help out those who don’t have that training.

I was that guy. And then ended up with that career partly because of it.

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.

I have no formal training and work in real estate so I’ve taught myself GNU/Linux CLI commands, docker and basic networking stuff with the help of the Internet, YouTube and some LLM assistance. I now self-host around a dozen services via docker on an old Dell XPS laptop for myself. This did lead me to consider a career change and I applied for and got into a free study course for the CompTIA Network+ and Security+ certificates so we’ll see if that ends up just becoming extra help for my hobby or a means to get into IT more broadly.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

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