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.
Companies love someone who spends their free time learning skills that benefit them.
I’ve always made sure to mention my personal interest and the last few years my full-server rack at least a short summary.
It’s gotten my foot in the door quite often when talking to managers with some IT knowledge; ones that don’t have any I wouldn’t want to work with anyways.
Good luck at your new job OP!
And don’t listen to the disgruntled old-timers that say you’ll stop exploring in your free time, they’re just jealous and/or have kids with very little free time left.
Fuck that. I am in my 40’s and still messing around with my lab and stuff in my free time…and at work. The want to learn never stops if you like what you are doing.