Working in your personal time shouldn't be a requirement while applying for new jobs.

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beastwithin379@reddit

The field only expects it because that's what employees in the field have set the expectation as with their complacency with it. I agree with you though. The idea that anyone who wants to work in tech should dedicate 100% of their time to it is completely ridiculous. It's not just limited to the tech umbrella but it is the most guilty of it.

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N0nprofitpuma_@reddit

I feel like the "home lab everything" advice is alongside the "get a bunch to certs" advice. It used to be an effective way to get a job. Now it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I completely agree with you. I already work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I have other shit to do for the rest of the time I have outside of that.

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ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit

I only recommend the home lab route to unemployed friends who have lots of time in their hands. But if you are already working only if you are passionate or enjoy over complicating your life, otherwise I would rather learn how to fix my motorcycle by myself, or how to do woodwork.

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fatcakesabz@reddit

Time I used to spend homelabbing I now spend working on the cars, am I less stressed? No because as I’ve moved up the ladder the jobs have become more stressful, but, I have a vent for it now, beating the shit out of a stubborn bolt then making it glow with a blow torch until I can get the f&@£er off is a great stress reliever, also getting to problem solve on something that isn’t work helps massively too.

Homelabs- great if you want to but, create more stress.

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Defconx19@reddit

This, homelab reccomendation is for people who have no relevant work experiance.

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ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit

Or people that want to host their own services. But that’s pretty much it.

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TerrificVixen5693@reddit

Pretty much this. Homelabs give you something to talk about if you don’t have any professional IT experience.

Being able to say you stood up an Active Directory Domain Controller on a VM at home isn’t as impressive as actually working for an IT team and working with the corporate SysOps team to implement updated GPOs for the new NAS server you implemented, but it’s a hell of a lot better than having nothing to talk about.

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ElectricOne55@reddit

I agree too. Plus I've found that every job or interview in tech is really specific. A lot of that time I spent studying a specific thing, I'd never get to use it. It all comes down to luck and getting through the algorithm for an interview.

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uptimefordays@reddit

The problem with home labs is they only teach you "how to install, configuring, and run" whatever you're running which is usually "not that difficult." Nobody's homelab has interlocking spreadsheets providing executive reporting for a bunch of datafeeds run through a bunch of intermediate databases.

I'm also seldom confident that folks running a basement full of EOL or greymarket kit with trial software are getting into the nitty gritty of what say "their hypervisor can do for them."

IMO vendor certifications usually have more realistic labs, but stuff like the old VCP courses from VMware are like $4000 so you get what you pay for.

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mineral_minion@reddit

That's true, but is also true of hiring someone fresh out of college. Homelab isn't a path to senior level positions, but it can show that someone has the underlying aptitude to be a junior.

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uptimefordays@reddit

Generally speaking, someone with a CS or CE degree (as is often required for entry level IT positions these days and infra positions for many years now) will have the prerequisite knowledge to succeed in an entry level IT support or developer position. From there, they'll build skills required to move into infra, cyber security, or whatever else.

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HexTalon@reddit

Nobody's homelab has interlocking spreadsheets providing executive reporting for a bunch of datafeeds run through a bunch of intermediate databases.

You might be surprised. There's been some wild setups documented on r/homelab , though for sure those aren't very common.

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uptimefordays@reddit

I think the other challenge is entry level roles increasingly require formal education and we’re seeing that more and more in infrastructure.

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DisplacerBeastMode@reddit

Curious about this.. doesn't make a difference because the industry just sucks? I feel like not having the homelab or certs, definitely will not help in this tough climate.

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Frothyleet@reddit

Certs will help you get past resume word search filters, at least. Home labbing is more in the "neat thing to bring up in an interview" category.

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bhones@reddit

No oversight into your homelab, unable to confirm if things are set up properly, if you followed best practices, if your home lab documentation is up to par. Sorry, we're going to go with another candidate. /s

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mineral_minion@reddit

We have a couple people in junior dev roles who had no experience who got the job based on their personal projects (including homelab) in their git repo.

It's not a magic bullet to getting a job, but it is at least something to show you have domain knowledge and skills.

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uptimefordays@reddit

I think part of the problem is infrastructure roles almost uniformly require prior, progressive, experience. While the market is definitely tough due to uncertainty, I see a lot of people applying to jobs they're not qualified for.

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DisplacerBeastMode@reddit

That makes sense. It also seems that companies are not willing to train for the role these days.

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Djglamrock@reddit

Well can you blame them completely? If everyone is supposed to be job hopping every 1-2 years, coupled with onboarding and all the other time sinks… why am I going to pay you to teach you your job just so you turn around and leave in 6-8 months.

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Low-Okra7931@reddit

Yeah I can blame them. It's their fault. Serial job hoppers have significantly higher salaries. The workers adapt to the market that employers create.

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Defconx19@reddit

It's not even the job hopping. It's the gamble of "is this the 1 in 100 college grads/cert holders that even barely understands the basics of troubleshooting or how to find answers? Or are they going to be one of the 99 wet noodles that can't critically think their way lut of a paper bag"

That is what gets me. Like, I get it, everyone is entry level at some point. But you can't teach motivation, and i'm starting to think people arent capable of operating without written instructions for EVERY tiny issue that comes up.

So many people get in "hey man, can you log into the router and check X for me" new guy responds "the address isnt in yhe documentation system" me for the 50th time "maybe try ipconfig?"

Look like ideally this SHOULD be documented. But it shouldnt derail someone, even an entry level hire.

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Djglamrock@reddit

Yeah I know what you mean. It’s frustrating.

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fresh-dork@reddit

if you trained people and offered real raises, people would stay

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Djglamrock@reddit

I do not dispute this one bit!

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Defconx19@reddit

I do. People leave jobs for more than money and being valued. The higher you rise in a company, the fewer spots their are.

People can hate their co-workers, some people are untrainable, some people dont want to be trained, some people get bored of the same company after a while.

More to job satisfaction than training and money.

Hell I was the second best paid person in my company before I switched to IT and took a job that was half as much money to progress in a new chapter (though I knew i could push and make more within 5 years which I did.)

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DisplacerBeastMode@reddit

Yeah I guess it's a double edged blade.. they aren't willing to train and they are unable to retain people.. still feels like a management / hr problem to me

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Djglamrock@reddit

Yeah it’s not a black or white kinda thing. I do agree that often it is management issue.

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uptimefordays@reddit

Infrastructure administration isn’t an entry level role, so it’s not shocking employers aren’t interested in training applicants in “what they’re already expected to know.”

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DisplacerBeastMode@reddit

When I started IT back in 2020 it seemed like a lot more companies were willing to take a chance on someone eager to learn, and would provide adequate time to train and grow into the role

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Defconx19@reddit

2020 they were desperate for bodies to figure out how to switch the whole world to remote work.

We have the exact opposite of that now.

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uptimefordays@reddit

In 2020 there was an industry wide hiring spree, unfortunately times are different now.

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manilove__frogs@reddit

It was really bad, and is now worse for needing experience more than anything else, with no way to get that experience.

So being able to talk about a home lab or cert is a one up on people who don't have experience, but if a company wants someone with experience, it's probably not going to help.

If you're working at an environment where you can't get experience on new things, just leave. Helpdesk positions are a dime a dozen, there are still orgs out there that allow for this kind of growth. Especially MSPs, and fortunately it's very very easy to hop between MSP jobs.

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ghostalker4742@reddit

I feel like the "home lab everything" advice is alongside the "get a bunch to certs" advice. It used to be an effective way to get a job. Now it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Cert grinding doesn't mean anything if you don't have experience. There's a stark difference between someone with 3-5yrs experience, and someone who took a 100 question test in 60min. "Just get a cert" was the defacto advice for a decade, and now the market is saturated. People get a cert and apply for mid/senior roles thinking it's a ticket to "job-land". Meanwhile there's lots of people who know what they're doing and have the relevant cert, but they get drowned out by the hundreds/thousands of others who got the same cert. Employers don't want to guess at whether an applicant is a paper chaser or the real deal, so the value of the cert becomes depreciated. [Then there's the issue of cert farms, cert fraud, etc].

As for the homelab, just be prepared to discuss it in great detail as you would any commercial IT environment. How did you decide between different chipsets? What made you choose that kind of network architecture? Did you follow any industry standards? How did you document your environment? Do you keep track of changes, if so, how? Topics like that can help someone stand out, and give an interviewer lots of room for conversation. Similarly, if you're just running a few home automation apps on a NUC/Pi, or a minecraft server for the kids, don't bother bringing it up, since that sort of skillset is considered foundational.

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Low-Okra7931@reddit

Yeah. Cert value has two components. The knowledge you get and the perceived value to employers. And the VAST majority of certs have no value to employers.

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Fit_Indication_2529@reddit

Home lab isn't just to say Oh I have a home lab. The proof is when you said I build a fully functioning network, with infrastructure services and websites. Showing you know what it takes from the power outlets to the Keyboards. That is more of a interview play. I don't single out candidates with home labs just because they have one too many people came in and said the gaming rig they have a home they put together and didn't overclock was a "Home Lab".

A gaming PC ≠ a home lab. A gaming PC might just run Windows/Linux and a VM or two, but a real lab mimics enterprise networks and services end-to-end.
Focus is on hands-on practice with enterprise technologies, networking, servers, clients, and security, and learning how all the pieces interact.

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223454@reddit

>>The proof is when you said I build a fully functioning network, with infrastructure services and websites

The problem I've always had with the idea of a homelab is no one is going to have the money to set up enterprise equipment/software at home, and having consumer grade equipment/software experience isn't really that useful. Yes you can have a 15 year old Cisco whatever from a previous job where you learned some cli, but that's about it. Having a homelab shows you enjoy tech enough to do it in your free time, and have likely picked up a few things, but I've personally never met anyone with a homelab set up that was advanced enough to be directly applicable to their day to day job. Besides that, tech changes so fast and there are so many different technologies, apps, hardware, ways of doing things, etc, that there's no way you can do enough to be useful. But I'm sure there are people out there that got a job because they had homelab experience with some specific app or whatever.

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sunburnedaz@reddit

/r/homelab wants a word with you.

8 years ago I was running a whole 42U rack, Servers that were only 1 or 2 generations behind, Cisco switches that were not EOL, 10GB ethernet, VMware servers etc. https://imgur.com/DR8t4f6

Whats crazy is that what all that was doing 10 years ago, im doing on a few SFF PCs a few NAS units and a newer switch and a nicer access point. I think all in Im in it for less than 2000 bones.

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hmmmno@reddit

Not many people have the opportunity to run equipment like that. It's pretty much impossible when thinking about space, noise, and electricity usage. Also, availability of used enterprise equipment can be pretty much non-existent outside the US, or the prices are crazy.

Full racks are usually possible only if you live in a place where you can own your house. Which in most places means that you're already doing extremely well financially.

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uptimefordays@reddit

One can setup a containerized webapp or website on a sub $500 pi cluster. But knowing that requires prerequisite knowledge the folks you're discussing don't have.

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Unexpected_Cranberry@reddit

Well, in my case I do it because I enjoy it. But, my homelab has a two node cluster running xpc-ng with shared storage connected over iSCSI running on a raspberry pi 5. The two nodes are a couple of refurbed elitedesk machines. You could use something cheaper, but I wanted Intel AMT support since they're sitting in a cupboard and I wanted a KVM solution so I don't need to connect a screen to do stuff that requires console access.

Total cost of hardware is probably $4-500. Probably less if you're in the US since hardware is expensive where I am.

XPC-ng and the Ubuntu distribution running on the raspberry are both free.

I have Windows keys through work, but you could just use the trials. At some point I'd like to finish building out my packer scripts in order to rebuild the environment using either terraform or vagrant on demand.

I'm running a vm with OPNSense to manage my networks.

It's not enterprise products per se, but it's close enough that it will allow you to learn a ton of concepts and technologies. If you learn how iSCSI works and set up volumes and targets using targetcli, you'll pick up how to do it using whatever product your future employer is using fairly quickly. Same goes for most of the stuff. The concepts and underlying tech is the same or similar, just a different GUI or cli. And even if the company doesn't use iSCSI, just setting up volumes, understanding RAID levels and other solutions for redundancy, working with volumes and shared storage on a hypervisor are all valuable skills.

I'm not posting this to say you should have a homelab, and I'm not going to pretend that $500 isn't a fair bit of money. I'm mostly posting this to highlight that you don't need to spend thousands on enterprise grade hardware and software to get value out of a homelab.

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jankisa@reddit

I have a gaming PC homelab, it's running 8 VM's over 3 VLANs, it has 3 different types of Windows joined devices plus some Linux VM's.

It has a fully functional RDGateway setup plus a bunch of stuff for testing company software.

Just because I also play Baldurs Gate 3 or Expedition 33 after I'm done with work and I power everything off it doesn't mean it's not a home lab.

A Raspberry Pi can be a homelab.

Gatekeeping homelabs is, in my opinion, pretty lame.

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Fit_Indication_2529@reddit

You have a gaming rig in your home lab, and that’s great, you’re using what you’ve got. When I’m hiring, it’s not about gatekeeping. It’s about proof you can build and run something that actually works. The best home labbers I’ve seen do it for fun, not for a résumé line. They stretch budgets, trade for gear, and learn from every failure. If you can get an OS running on non-standard hardware and make it stable, that tells me more about your problem-solving ability than a rack full of used enterprise kit ever will. So yeah, maybe it is gatekeeping in a way, but that’s my job: to hire people who can solve problems with whatever’s on hand.

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ntrlsur@reddit

I have to agree with this. We were searching for a mid / low level sysadmin to take some of the burden off of myself. The majority of the people that submitted resumes were network engineer folks several from verizon, comcast, cogent ... while yes I could happily use someone with their skillset I need a sysadmin that can work with the network infra as well as the server side. The best guys I interviewed had homelabs they stood up for fun to learn new stuff. I'm willing to train them on the way we do things but I'm looking for someone who can troubleshoot and is willing to learn. While we don't pay alot its in the pay zone and its a very relaxed work environment.

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uptimefordays@reddit

Very few people need a homelab that "mimics enterprise networks and services end-to-end" because if you need that your company will already have such environment, and if you have it despite that you are basically donating money to your company and taking your job home, for no particular reason.

People used to do this to learn the skills required to move from help desk to sysadmin.

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Pazuuuzu@reddit

Yep, my homelab probably has better security and practices than my work infra. Is it overkill, and just waste of power, maybe, but it's cool, and the blinking lights are like a year long Christmas to me.

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Loop_Within_A_Loop@reddit

I think it depends.

If you’re already employed and doing cool stuff, it’s not necessary.

If you’re unemployed, or the stuff you’re doing at work isn’t what you want to be doing, you need to be on your grind off hours

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noblejeter@reddit

Agreed!! I’m in a solid position in IT but it’s not exactly what I want to be doing so the homelab keeps me up to date and my skills sharp.

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nope_nic_tesla@reddit

It's good advice for people with no relevant education or experience. Otherwise, those things should speak for themselves. I have never once put any home lab project on my resume.

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Genesis2001@reddit

A homelab really shouldn't be a "mock-prod" config for a corporate network. It should simply be what you want to host for you, your family, and friends.

That said, if you want to do a mock-prod homelab for cert study, go ahead. Don't do it just because someone tells you to do it. Do it because you like the work. With a homelab, you have full freedom to experiment, unlike probably most corpo IT.

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jankisa@reddit

My first IT job interview, I was 25 and the guy (owner of the company at the time) told me he likes me, but he won't be recommending me because I don't seem like the type of guy that would be working outside of working hours.

Thankfully, the others in the interview process and my test scores were good enough to get me into this entry level position (L1 windows support) and I haven't looked back once.

During my first 5 years, I had so much to learn without trying to do anything at home that I'd honestly feel like it would fry my brain if I tried to squeeze more in.

Only lately, when I got to a level where I'm a manager and do advanced things did I find a lot of value of having a good PC to run my home lab in.

It's super useful when you want to test things that your company devices or cloud environments might not be suitable for.

If I wanna open a phishing email to see how it looks I take the URL from it and open it in my home lab, no alerts from the Security team yelling at me, no Defender alerts, and I get to see how it looks so I can recognize it in the future. Not to mention, since I'm fully remote, RDP-ing into my PC that's sitting right next to me from my work laptop is way better then getting on to a VPN and doing things 3 countries away.

Outside of that, it's also nice to keep up with things, I like new technology, so I run some local LLM's on my PC, it's not great or snappy, but it does let me understand the underlying technology way better then just opening chatboxes online.

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Geminii27@reddit

because I don't seem like the type of guy that would be working outside of working hours.

Dodged a bullet. No-one wants to work on a team where there's an expectation of working outside contracted hours. Especially for free.

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jankisa@reddit

Well, I did actually go on to work for this company for a few years, about 6 months in the guy in question sold his share and went on to other ventures.

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mrperson221@reddit

It's not going to directly get you the job, but it will help you build the skills to get one. It's not much different from OJT, but it's a lot easier to learn and retain new skill sets when you are doing the work for yourself.

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greger416@reddit

Don't forget on call 🤢

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sobrique@reddit

On call is OK if it's paid.

Working for free though? No thanks.

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Okay_Periodt@reddit

Tea. Your work on the job is your lab.

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mohan-thatguy@reddit

This hits home. There’s this unspoken expectation in IT that if you’re not labbing, certing, or tinkering in your off hours, you’re somehow “less committed.” That constant pressure adds up fast. I burned out the same way, constantly context switching between work fires and home tasks. What helped me recover wasn’t another system or course; it was learning how to offload my mental noise somewhere safe. I actually built a small tool for that called NotForgot AI, not a job tracker, just a place to brain-dump everything and have it organize itself so my mind could rest a bit. Even if it’s just journaling or voice notes, anything that helps you stop holding it all in your head makes a huge difference. You’re absolutely right, rest should never need to be justified.

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grouchy-woodcock@reddit

I have a home lab because I love what I do, not because it's expected. If you're already burnt out, this line of work may not be for you.

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not-at-all-unique@reddit

How would you feel about attending night classes working towards a management degree?

If you think this benefits you, makes you more employable, and you’d spend money to have less free time…

Why is this different from learning new skills in a homeland?

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MathmoKiwi@reddit

It's because you're competing against people who are very passionate about this. So that's the high bar you'll have to pass to beat people who are already "working" after hours for fun because this is what they enjoy

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ThinkBig_Brain@reddit

Totally agree. If an organization dismisses a candidate purely because they don't have a personal 'home-lab' despite having the experience and ability to perform the job effectively, they've completely missed the point. Proficiency on the clock should be the focus, not personal dedication during off-hours.

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Nnyan@reddit

Never had a single interviewer tell me I needed a home lab. That’s wild.

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karlsmission@reddit

Home lab is to teach myself something that is not part of my current work. There is a lot of new stuff out there, my job has a pretty broad scope, but it isn't everything. I try to get things to work on at work, but it doesn't always make sense, so I can't always get budget for it. So home lab to the rescue.

I work on my cars/motorcycles/live on a farm with my animals/ have a wife and 5 kids, I also have my own youtube channel, I have PLENTY of things to do other than work on my home lab.

HOWEVER. to me, it's like taking a college course on a topic you have interest in. I take a specific thing I'm interested in learning and carve out an hour or two 2-3 nights a week for say 8 weeks max to learn about it, work on it. then I'm done, and move on.

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lordjedi@reddit

You only need a homelab in order to experiment and learn things that you can't or aren't learning at work.

Back in the day I setup DHCP at home just to learn how to do it (we had everything static at work). More recently, I'll spin up VMs to try things out. My "homelab" is just my PC running VirtualBox.

You've been in IT for 5 years and you're trying to change jobs during a softening of the market. It might take a while to find something different.

I would definitely not say that the field expects a homelab. The community tells you that because it is the quickest way to learn something new (practically everything has a free version and you don't need to learn the exact products in order to get the experience).

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SharpWick@reddit

Imo a manager position with 5 years experience is too soon. Im 7 years into this career and just started a senior system admin / delivery team and couldn’t begin thinking about management. Thats just me though.

If you don’t have the technical knowledge to advance further into a senior system admin or technical architect (or similar) then you may need to scale back to helpdesk. Maybe second or third line.

On a more positive, if you were to get a free project manager certification (i believe google offer these) then you could use that and your experience as a manager to leverage yourself into a project manager position.

Good luck in your career.

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cjburchfield@reddit

I homelab because I enjoy it. I'm in IT because I like IT. I can say that having a homelab has helped me a bit in interviews, but not enough to make a difference in hiring.

I leave work at work. Once I'm off the clock, unless you're paying me to be on call, it can wait until the next day.

If you want out of the Helpdesk, find out what the next step is (usually some sort of Jr System Admin) and work towards that (ie, start learning how linux works, what your Windows servers do etc) at work. You don't have to spend your personal time learning things for work. Most of us do that because we enjoy it, and our hobbies and our jobs intersect.

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SleepyZ6969@reddit

Homelabs only help with certain rare employers. More to show you have a genuine passion for tech than anything else.

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rfisher23@reddit

My tombstone won't say "IT Expert" on it. I have a passion for tech, but i'm supposed to spend 8 hours a day, managing networks, dealing with little shit kids with broken Chromebooks. Teachers who refuse to manage their students and instead insist that tech just "block every game website". And then i'm supposed to go home and do it all for fun? no thank you.

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I_FUCKIN_LOVE_BAGELS@reddit

You’re the guy who majored in STEM because it brings money. The people with homelabs are the people who majored in STEM because it’s all they enjoyed doing anyway. Not everyone with a homelab does it for brownie points. Some of us just love tinkering. You don’t need to tear down others to justify your worthiness.

Since we’re on the topic, you seem like the bitter person who never makes it out of hell desk. Either change your mindset, or rot - Your choice.

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OneSeaworthiness7768@reddit

In my experience, people who say “hell desk” and consider those who don’t tinker with IT stuff every free moment they have as lesser tend do be the bitter ones that are difficult to work with in the real world.

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ThemesOfMurderBears@reddit

I haven't found that having a homelab translates into someone being more knowledgeable or not. I have worked with many techs that do nearly zero IT work when not at work. Some don't even have computers besides their work laptop. They are still good at what they do.

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mineral_minion@reddit

Right, but if you have no job experience yet, how do you show you are good at what you do? I got my first job as a junior because I could talk about things I had set up on my linux box at home. If I were applying to jobs now, I wouldn't need to lean on my homelab experience because I have actual work experience.

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Pazuuuzu@reddit

I totally get it, I have a homelab with a rack and multiple PLC's and even I have days when I just don't want to go near anything more complicated than a microwave... Homelabs should be a hobby what you do when you feel like it, not a chore...

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rfisher23@reddit

Well… considering I’m already well outside of help desk and in so very accomplished roles, you are incorrect. Just because it was your path doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s path. Some of us just have a knack for things, I don’t need to spend 17 hours fucking around with Linux distros on my own time to understand how they work. Maybe I’m blessed, maybe I’m cursed, but either way I’m paid well, I work 8 hours, and I go home. No “on call hours” I can take vacation whenever I want and do what I’m truly passionate about. Not everyone wants to be a CTO, most of us just want to make enough money to be happy.

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vNerdNeck@reddit

and your so humble.

attitude checks out for 90% of linux/mainframe admins I know.

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rfisher23@reddit

Not trying to be cocky, I just get tired of hearing people say "YOU NEED A HOMELAB, YOU NEED TO DO ADDITIONAL LEARNING OUTSIDE OF YOUR WORKING HOURS!" for some people this is true.

Some people are truly passionate and want to learn more, I want to know enough to complete my job I get paid at the end of the week. And guess what, both ways of doing things are fine.

You're allowed to not be 100% committed 100% of your time to your JOB. If some people choose too then good on them, but i'll tell you one thing, most of those people would be happier spending that time elsewhere.

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vNerdNeck@reddit

Regardless of your job, you should be spending some of your personal time on professional development. That doesn't always mean a home lab though.

You don't have to, but don't bitch about your station and pay. If you put in the bare min that is what you will get in return.

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rfisher23@reddit

You guys aren't given time at work for continuing education? How are you expected to keep up with changing standards and protocols? On you own time? Just seems crazy to me. If I need to do something for a company i'm compensated accordingly.

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vNerdNeck@reddit

Oh, these days I'm compensated plenty. This year's looking around 350-400k.

but I only got there by spending my personal time in my 20s learning on my own what I didn't have time to during the day.

You are confused that learning on your won time is "for your company," it's for you. Going to get another cert isn't for your company it's for you. Learning a new tech stack isn't for your company, it's for you. Going to events and after hours function isn't for your company, it's for you and your career.

and it pays off.

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RikiWardOG@reddit

You are confused that learning on your won time is "for your company," it's for you.

This, so much this. I didn't land my current gig by slacking off in my free time. I grinded until I got the knowledge and skills. Now I make good money at an amazing company and honestly take a back seat for a bit and have a good work/life balance. Some people just expect to be given everything. If you want it, you do what it takes to get it.

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

Why even keep working after your first 5 years at that salary? Can invest a portion and easily retire.

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vNerdNeck@reddit

if I was single with no kids..100%.

but wife + kidssssssss = yeah, still working :)

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

I mean.. does it really cost millions to raise kids?

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Artist_Bright@reddit

Can I DM you. I am starting in the field and you seem to have a good mindset about personal development. Would love to pick your brain :)

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rfisher23@reddit

So what you just said is that you sacrificed all of your youthful, fun years, expanding your education (great for you, not a knock by any means). $350-400 is a nice payday, cool, but have you had any fun? Have you taken any “trips to no where” with friends? Have you road tripped across the country? Found morels hidden in the woods. Watched the sun rise over a pond? Moneys cool, but I’ll take experiences any day.

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vNerdNeck@reddit

yes, and I've actually had the money to do it!

I've been to Europe many times, asia and other places.

I have a family (wife / many kids) that I can support and not worry about bills.

Just because I worked 60-80hours a week (sometimes more) in my 20s doesn't mean I also didn't take time off and travel and go have fun.

I for sure sacrificed and missed stuff. But it was worth it.

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rfisher23@reddit

Awesome! Genuinely happy for you, a lot of people throw away their entire lives after a career. It’s nice to see that both are possible.

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techdog19@reddit

This if I need or want training my boss approves it then I schedule it during work unless it can't be.

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Pazuuuzu@reddit

I do it on my own time every once in a while in aspects that are somewhat related to my field. Just to make sure I won't get educated by my employer into a golden cage eventually.

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dotnetmonke@reddit

What if you want to learn something outside your job responsibilities? I can justify CE within the realm of my duties, but that doesn't include a bunch of things like networking, Kubernetes, containerization, Aspire, Postgres. I know my job isn't keen on changing any part of our stack unless someone is somewhat familiar with it already, which can be hard to do without using it on personal time.

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Darkace911@reddit

Get out of the school systems unless you are in it for the retirement.

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SayNoToStim@reddit

I consider "Tech nerd" one of my hobbies though. I have a home lab because I wanted to set up a plex server.

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fedroxx@reddit

I'd prefer to do it the other way around. Sadly, hobbies seldom produce a living.

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rfisher23@reddit

My hobby actually could provide a living. Unfortunately, that living is then a 24/7 365 kinda deal. Something i'm not entirely interested in. I would love to train dogs for a living and probably could, but thats no vacations, no sick days nothing. As an alternative, I work 8 hours a day in a school, essentially make my own schedule, take vacation and personal time whenever I want and I get out at 1-2 pm which gives me time to train my dogs. I'd rather train dogs all the time, but its not realistic.

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deucemcsizzles@reddit

I feel like monetizing your hobby is a terrible idea. PCs and tech used to be my hobby and now if something tech wise breaks at my place, I won't even bother trying to troubleshoot it, time to buy a new one.

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ThemesOfMurderBears@reddit

Kind of where I ended up. I help my wife and son if they need it, and extended family if asked (pretty rare though). Outside of that, the only real "hobby" that involves tech is messing around with things in my homelab -- none of which relate to work.

And even with that, my homelab will often go months without being touched. It's a struggle to do basically anything broadly applicable to "IT".

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Isgrimnur@reddit

Hobbies exist to consume excess time and money.

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imnotaero@reddit

I dedicate time and money to hobbies because I enjoy them and derive value from them. I have no "excess time." There are things I'd like to do that I don't do for lack of time. I have a list of priorities and hobbies fit in my 24 hours because I want to do them more than the other stuff.

So that's not to say hobbies are right for you, or should be on your list. However, objectively, hobbies aren't what you claim them to be.

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FullPoet@reddit

My tombstone won't say "IT Expert" on it.

Not in support of doing things outside of work, but a lot of historical gravestones (at least in my country) has the persons occupation on it, as well as the wife (usually housewife, because theyre old stones).

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NexusOne99@reddit

And then we got unions and moved past your occupation defining your life.

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FullPoet@reddit

I mean have we? Super pro union but how many people actually change their careers?

Most people are defined by their careers - how they think, speak and interact with other people is basically shaped by your professional life no?

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NexusOne99@reddit

Fuck no? I rarely if ever talk about work outside of work. Maybe one of the 50 or so people I see socially regularly works in at all a similar field. So the majority of my waking hours is not at all connected to my career.

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FullPoet@reddit

Its not about what you talk about, its about a lot more things but you do you.

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NexusOne99@reddit

think, speak and interact with other people

And I don't think, speak or interact with other people at all related to my job outside my job.

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rfisher23@reddit

While this is true. I have many hobbies that would take precedence over “IT Expert”. I would much rather be known as “expert dog trainer” “lover of pheasant hunting” “outdoor explorer” etc etc, the job just pays so I can do fun things.

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Fair-Morning-4182@reddit

Exactly. I'm not sure if most occupations suck the passion out of you like IT does, but man it really stole the passion I used to have. I used to be the kid that would wake up early to play runescape every day before school, you couldn't get me off a computer. Nowadays I just want to work on my vintage truck or hang out with my chickens. The thought of grinding hours after a brutal workday on something I don't enjoy, simply for a potential job is just sickening to me.

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5panks@reddit

Conversely, your employer is under no obligation to upskill you in subjects that aren't relevant to the job you do for them. That means part of progression involves upskilling yourself. Not necessarily a home lab, but certs, conferences, training, etc.

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That-Value6809@reddit

this

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hooch@reddit

When I interview somebody and they say they have a homelab, I take that to mean they're passionate about computers and technology. Then I proceed to ask them no questions about it, and never bring it up again.

That's a roundabout way of saying feel free to lie about your homelab. Or at least embellish. Have a desktop that you use to run a Plex server or something? That's a homelab.

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Geminii27@reddit

Fuck passion. Can you do the job or not, for the wage on offer?

I don't care how 'passionate' someone is if they keep screwing up the job.

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tdhuck@reddit

Yeah, agree. You can also lie and say you have a home lab, they won't know.

When I first got into IT I had a home lab, not because you 'needed' one, it just came from actually liking IT and wanting to have one.

I enjoyed it for the few years that I had it, but now I just want a simple network and I just want it to work. Yes, I still have some vlans and 'more' network gear than what is needed, but it really isn't overkill and it is very basic.

I'm not sure how anyone I'm interviewing with could confirm if I'm lying or telling the truth about a home lab.

Of course it helps to know a bit about the stuff you are 'lying' about. I don't recommend saying you have a home lab running proxmox on physical hosts with shared storage pools if you've never touched proxmox and haven't actually set it up.

Back in the day when I had a home lab, you could download vmware esxi for free but you were limited to the non vsphere stuff, if I recall. Not sure what, if any, current free offerings they have now that broadcom has taken over.

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slayermcb@reddit

While I agree with you, look at it from a hiring perspective. The competition is fierce right now, and I can pick whoever I want. So if I find someone hungry and without a social life who dedicates his spare time to more work I can squeeze more out of him then a family man who has higher priorities. Having the home lab shows you dont have anything else going on.

Personally, fuck that. But I get it.

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NetworkEngineer114@reddit

Breaking out of support can be hard.

The org you are at makes a big difference. Do they cross train? Do they allow you to take on some work that is above your pay grade? If so you may have an opportunity to grow within your organization. If not than maybe you need to upskill yourself and find a different job.

I started on the helpdesk and then moved to a Sr. Helpdesk position where I was able to focus a bit on sysadmin tasks.

I created a desktop imaging solution and this project got me noticed and moved to the sysadmin teams. I primarly did software and OS distribution but I also did AD, DHS, DHCP, File & Print, Exchange and SQL work as well.

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bhones@reddit

I don't live to work, I work to live. I get certifications because the company wants me to have them, they are studied for on company time and tested at the company's expense.

If someone told me, in an interview, that my lack of a home lab was troubling, I would likely let them know that on second thought, I'm not interested and left the call. I, like you, do not eat, breathe and shit technology/IT. I don't want to think about work related devices or issues if I'm not on the clock.

Speaking of which, you don't get paid for the 15-30 minutes you show up early to get set up and logged in. So... show up 5 minutes early. Enough time to get from the door to your desk. Log in /on time/.

Work culture in general is toxic as hell and way too many arbitrary things are being thrown around as crucial or important when they're really just... not.

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discosoc@reddit

“Should” doesn’t matter as long as there are people willing to do it.

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Mcmunn@reddit

This is what I came to say. As long as people are willing to do this for the same money… employers will continue to expect it

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traumalt@reddit

My doctor friend is expected to read and study medical articles on his own time, he doesn't get paid for any of it, but the knowledge is a requirement to maintain employment pretty much.

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bageloid@reddit

My doctor wife gets paid CE time.

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Derpy_Guardian@reddit

Yeah but there's a reason for that. The medical field is constantly advancing and doctors need to keep up to avoid giving bad advice or outdated treatments. They're playing with peoples' lives; they can't afford to get lax.

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Mcmunn@reddit

Yeah I spend 10 hours a week staying on the cutting edge of tech. Being at the front edge has made me a lot of money over the years and given me access to premium work. But I love the subject matter so it doesn’t feel like work.

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feelingoodwednesday@reddit

Yeah, what does OP expect? No one is gonna hand you anything in life (unless you're a nepo baby). If X is gonna bust his butt upskilling to get to that "next level" more advanced position, and Y is going to just do their job and apply, well its not too hard to see who will be more appealing to employers.

No one is going to force you to get certs or degrees or advanced training. It's completely up to you whether or not you want to, and if you do, there will probably be more opportunities in the market for your advanced skillset.

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fataldarkness@reddit

Username does NOT check out. But you're right.

As an adult the most important thing I have learned is exactly this. The world we think we should be able to live in and the way we think society should function are completely different from reality.

Sometimes regardless of whether its fair or not, you need to bite the bullet and just do it. If you can't, well honestly that sucks, but life is not fair, the truth is not everyone is given equal opportunity.

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my_name_isnt_clever@reddit

Not just willing, some of us like it. I've had some form of home lab IT since before I was working, I just really like tech.

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KrackedOwl@reddit

Homelab helps you look like you're obsessed with tech stacks, which managers like. But if it's at home, KISS.... "The last car a mechanic ever fixes is their own."

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Defconx19@reddit

KISS is the foundational property of my home network. I dont have it in me anymore to ti ker with it when I get home. I just want it to work.

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KrackedOwl@reddit

I feel ya, even my watch is analog! Too many digital whatzits and woozles these days.

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Valdaraak@reddit

Homelab helps you look like you're obsessed with tech stacks, which managers like

Not all of them. I'd prefer to have someone who knows that work is work and home is home. Less likely to burnout than the hot-shot go-getters that dick around in their homelab when they get home from a day of dicking around in a production network.

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KrackedOwl@reddit

Great to hear you've got this mindset! Would be sweet if that would spread out to the rest of the management class....

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deucemcsizzles@reddit

Have you seen what chefs eat after they get off shift?

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KrackedOwl@reddit

exactly!

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Ssakaa@reddit

I'm not saying any of the stack I have at home works... but it exists, and I can talk a LOT about how I've diagnosed and solved issues in it... which is incidentally a lot more valuable than "I dunno, I copied curl some-repo/setup.sh | bash and it just worked.`

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KrackedOwl@reddit

I mean, yea agreed. You gotta have SOME level of curiosity to make it in this field. It's the display of passion that matters, and homelabs are an easy path to talk about that passion. I never invested in a homelab, but I can talk until I'm blue in the face about trying to make my gaming PC a jellyfin server, swapping back and forth between linux install vs windows install, different side projects I've invested time into at work when it's quiet, etc. I'm not saying never experiment, but I have encountered a certain classism from certain interviewers when I tell them I never spent the money on a proper homelab.

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Ssakaa@reddit

You're hitting yourself with the classism! You do have a homelab, it's just one box that you multipurpose... which means you also keep it in working order often enough to serve some role, assuming you do like to game now and then.

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hosalabad@reddit

My home lab is the datacenter at work. I'm not dedicating space or power for a business that isn't paying me for the time and energy. Don't work for free, ever.

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Low-Okra7931@reddit

I upskill during work hours. I never do any work off clock. I'm not sure what your workload is, but finding an hour for learning a day should be doable. I happy for people in this thread that have just LOVE playing home lab, but I don't.

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Maxplode@reddit

I feel this and it's also the same reason why I don't socialise with my team.
In an older job I had I used to socialise and we would often go to the pub or play games but the moment someone gets promoted or decides to leave it rapidly changes the dynamics. So now I don't socialise or buy into the 'we're family here' mentality. I turn up and I work and I go home.

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thadasou@reddit

So you're basically a help desk supervisor with no sys admin experience and you refuse to do the one thing that can help you get that experience. You also have no passion for tech. Yeah sorry bud

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Defconx19@reddit

Uh home lab advise is normally for people trying to break into IT not people who have been in it for 5 years.

Also there is a distinct difference between "work in your off hours" and working on bettering yourself in your free time.

You may bust your ass all day at work, and its why you likely rose so quickly through the ranks. Others however dont.

Some people genuinely enjoy homelab stuff. It's not a requirement. But for some people its how they learn.

Maybe I'm missing your point but other fields dont evolve as rapidly as IT. If you arent always learning you fall behind. Most times I'll familiarize myself with new things between tasks at work, or rolling something out for the first time. Others I do on my own time. Depends really.

At the end of the day, I want to always be progressing and sometimes that means doing things on my own time.

IT is change it will always be change, comparing it to other random verticals doesnt make sense. Look at doctors woth residencies, re-certs, trainings, conferences. Some is paid on the clock, but other times it involves studying off the clock.

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PurpleTechie@reddit

A homelab to a sysadmin is the same as a car project to a mechanic.

Its a passion you can have but should never be a requirement.

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Hashrunr@reddit

Plenty of other professions require the same or higher level of devotion. Do you think research professors are only working 8hrs and not working in their lab after hours? Do you think doctors aren't working more than 8hrs? Do you think nurses aren't studying after their shifts? Do you think finance bros aren't taking classes and studying after hours? A good friend of mine is a master welder and has a full blown metal shop at home. If you want to get a leg up in this world you need to put in extra work. It's not just IT.

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systemfrown@reddit

Wasn't always like this...but has been at most places for decades now. I feel very fortunate to have gotten into the profession when it still had some cachet and well before it became commoditized to such a degree...and to have been senior enough by the time it went to shit that I was mostly insulated. But wouldn't recommend the profession to most folks now.

And that's just me being honest.

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Afro_Samurai@reddit

Imagine asking about a homelab for a Big Iron admin job in the 80s.

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TheStupidDeskTech@reddit (OP)

Honestly I'm seriously looking to switch careers.

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AlternativeLazy4675@reddit

We don't know what the future holds, but I don't recommend people get into IT at this point. Right now there's too many people flooding the job market thanks to all the generous AI layoffs. That can, of course, change.

You are not inexperienced, however, so the choice is not clear. I'd continue looking. There doesn't need to be a lot of jobs out there--just one that you are right for.

Personally I don't see the point of having a home lab. It's not real world experience, so it's not worth all that much, in my view. But it's up to you. If it helps you with your career goals, then sure, why not? I'm just not sure it will.

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dotnetmonke@reddit

Personally I don't see the point of having a home lab. It's not real world experience, so it's not worth all that much, in my view.

Same as coding for personal projects, I imagine.

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systemfrown@reddit

Any profession that gauges staffing by retroactively observing breaking points is probably one you want to stay away from.

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paleologus@reddit

I already had 5 years experience by time the local college started cranking out MiS/CS degrees.

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systemfrown@reddit

Sounds about right. Prior to that most Sysadmins were previously Accountants or from some other roles that had given them early access and exposure to computers.

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SignificanceDue733@reddit

I do homelabbing because it is fun. Idk. If you don’t find that stuff fun, does it mean you don’t like work either? That kinda sucks man I’m sorry. I don’t have an answer but there isn’t anything wrong with how you feel

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timbotheny26@reddit

Apart from income and general life stability having almost always been an obstacle towards me "properly" pursuing tech as a hobby, I also have never had the physical space for something like that.

Money and life stability still remain a barrier for me, as does physical space, though I did just build a new gaming PC, so I have that going for me. Full transparency: I did have help building it; I brought all of the parts to a local computer repair/IT shop just to have a more experienced person on hand. On the plus side, he did tell me that I actually did most of the work myself, and I had good build time for what was essentially someone's first build attempt. (Approximately 3 hours.)

So yay, I guess I'm more competent than I realize.

In the future, what I'd really like to get into a retro builds. I'll probably build a home lab at some point, but I'm not sure what I'll ever end up doing with it. It'll probably just sit there looking pretty.

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macemillianwinduarte@reddit

They are probably lowkey telling you you don't have the experience needed for the position.

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noobtastic31373@reddit

That's my assumption as well. Home labs are for teaching yourself, and the only reason it should matter is for experience. If you've already had experience with something through work or training, there's no gain in building it at home. OP likely doesn't have hands-on experience in something required for the job, and they're trying to find if they have any familiarity at all.

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

OPs point is that experience should be gained on the clock. The expectation of how much experience someone has in tech is absurd these days. Being competent in tech with some experience often translates to “I can definitely learn and understand systems.”

Sure, some positions absolutely require experience. But the giant lack of junior positions to get said experience is startling.

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1a2b3c4d_1a2b3c4d@reddit

I would wager we’re going to have a shortage of competent tech workers once seniors start to retire.

Which will increase the salary for those junior positions... especially for the good ones.

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Darkace911@reddit

That is why they outsourced everything overseas. They don't like having to pay what they consider the janitors a living wage in the US. Capital One used to have a huge IT group and call centers in the Richmond VA area. Now, they are still there but they have massively shipped jobs overseas and are basically paying the same amount of money to lower grade techs that they did 25 years ago.

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uptimefordays@reddit

OPs point is that experience should be gained on the clock. The expectation of how much experience someone needs in tech is absurd these days. Being competent in tech with some experience often translates to “I can definitely learn and understand systems.”

On one hand, there's more to know these days, on the other, it's all highly coupled information that builds on foundational knowledge a lot of people should know but don't. If one understands operating systems, conceptually, it's not hard switching between Linux and Windows: they have users, file systems, permissions to said file systems, services and processes, drivers, logs, etc.

Part of the problem is folks should learn these concepts in entry level support roles, build those skills up, and then move on to more advanced roles but often don't.

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TheStupidDeskTech@reddit (OP)

Thank you! You put it into words better than what I wrote. I probably didn't word it very well.

I'm definitely not against the idea of learning more skills, but it should be structured in a way so that it's not just on my own time.

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DJDoubleDave@reddit

This is it. A home lab is a way to get experience doing something that isn't part of your current job. If you're applying for a job that your previous work experience prepares you for, you don't need it.

If you're trying to switch career tracks, moving from Windows to Linux admin for example, a home lab could be a great choice. You'd have the professional admin experience, and the home lab could show you have at least a working Linux knowledge. But if you already had professional Linux admin experience, that's even better and the home lab wouldn't matter.

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Sea-Raise-1813@reddit

Completely agree with this. The “you need a homelab” advice gets thrown around like it’s mandatory, but not everyone has the time or energy after a full day of tickets and escalations. Real-world experience under pressure teaches more than spinning up a few VMs at home ever will. Burnout is real, and work shouldn’t own your personal life too.

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Darkace911@reddit

As someone who did break out of desktop hell to a sysadmin, I think you should have something that you can bring up in an interview when they ask if you have used this tech before. Being able to build a domain controller from install disk got me an MSP job where we built a new domain controller for a new small business about every week. That job got me a real Sysadmin job after a few years of learning on the job. Things are different now because the economy is stupid but you have to figure out what skills and certs you need for the next job you want and get them somehow. Taking in-person classes at a community college, a home lab, dropping real money for a boot camp, these are things that you might have to do unless your family owns a company or something like that.

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come_ere_duck@reddit

Home lab as advice? Crazy! Personally I do have my own 365 tenant which I run tests on and such with the side benefit that I have the full office sweet at home and licensing for windows etc. but It's not something I need for my job. It's just handy to test things in an environment where there is no user impact.

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ilkhan2016@reddit

Homeland are there so when you get you get asked in an interview if you're familiar with obscure tool #58 you can honestly say "yes" or "I've stood up, configured, designed backups and DR environment" on that tool or something very similar and get a leg up over candidates who can't.

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j4ckofalltr4des@reddit

as someone that has done everything from Corp Training, Support, Data Center Tech (rackin-n-stackin) Networking, Project management, Sys Admin, Cloud Engineering, to now Dev Ops and Management, you never stop learning. Ive been in "tech" for almost 40 years and I'm still constantly learning new things. As my username suggests, I'm no topic expert on ANYTHING but I know enough to keep my greybeard self relevant.

Having a home lab is great if you are genuinely curious and want to constantly learn and test new things. If research if FUN for you, a homelab is wonderful. Depending on what you want to do though, a "Cloud Lab" in AWS, Azure, or GCP would probably serve you better these days.

If you don't already have the skills or knowledge for the job you want, how else are you going to learn unless you do so in your free time? No employer is going to pay you to learn things that are not relevant to your current role. So you have to do it on your own.

Pick a destination and work backwards to determine a path to get there. Finish your degree if you haven't already. Gets certs. Practice. It may not GET you the job but it might get you in the door for the interview. THATS where you show them they need you. Not on your resume.

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heapsp@reddit

Why though, you dont need college for this type of gig. Some people go to grad school or night school while working to break out of entry level positions. Home lab is no different. ..

And guess what, this is common in other fields too. Good luck finding a decent teacher who isnt grading papers at night or sales people who arent working on presentations for the next day.

You dont have to do this. You can relax and get quality of life, you just have to earn it first.

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DeptOfOne@reddit

As a grey beard with 18+ years on this IT train I have to say that OP is headed for a short ride. Longevity in this field comes to those who are able to invest in themselves by keeping current. If you are luckly to work for an org that develops talent through regular training during the work day then great. But if there is no training at your job then you have to do it on your own. You have to make the time and the space to study at home. Once you explain it your family they should be supportive enough to allow you that space. Not saying for you spend 6 hours after you get home and completely ignore your family but 2 to three hours every night reading a cert book or working in the home lab is a reasonable ask. Hell even if you only do it 2 nights a week. Its not working its your continuing education. Investing in YOU so you can better provide for YOUR family. My last job there was zero money for training. I leveraged my home lab experience to get a better job. Still found the time for family. So OP answer this.

How bad do you want out of this job?

If your burnt out now how soon before you get replaced by upper management?

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zephalephadingong@reddit

Work at a small MSP. No need for a home lab, the clients provide that.

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zenmaster24@reddit

💯% agree with - employers dont want to pay for training anymore

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Sweet_Mother_Russia@reddit

For the home lab… just lie. Say you run a local media server with a hardware RAID configured and rattle off some bullshit about a pfsense firewall or something. Who gives a fuck. It’s all bullshit anyway. No one with a homelab is doing anything that matters in 2025.

Everything is SAAS and hardware is cool or whatever. But you do that shit on the job.

If you don’t wanna be lying lying then google enough to set up the equipment you’d want to run but don’t actually run it because buying that stuff is stupid and having it in your house is even more stupid.

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tampon_whistle@reddit

Honestly you are right, you shouldn’t have to dedicated your free time to a home lab. But even if it’s some small pet project like a plex server or some home automation it looks good. When I interview candidates it’s something I ask. It’s not required but I like to see just a tiny something. It lets me know you enjoy tech, and that usually translates into you liking your jobs. Most my techs have little side projects, but I got a couple guys like yourself that have projects on the opposite end of the tech spectrum.

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Fragrant-Meet-9980@reddit

“i learn everything on the job and don’t need to learn anything else because there definitely aren’t people out there smarter and more passionate than me willing to take my job”

you guys are like a bunch of overgrown children

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bobivy1234@reddit

How old are you? The reality is that everyone with a solid senior level job in the IT world has dealt with sacrifices of time to get to where they need to be and to get things done. Learning takes dedicated time, repetition, and being in the trenches. You won't find anyone with a CCIE for example that did all of their studying during the work day. The best things in life don't come easy.

While sure everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, there are plenty of people out there that dedicate time to building the foundations of their career when time is a bit more available compared to later in life. While it sucks in the short-term, it sets you up for the rest of your life to have a successful career.

Do you think students in med-school or law-school that are working grueling internships during the day aren't working/studying in their off-hours to keep up? They do it because it is necessary to get the role/pay they want but they have to put in ample amount of time like everyone else.

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TheLostITGuy@reddit

If you're not going to improve while you're on the job and learn new things, when/where else are you going to do that?

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Hour-Profession6490@reddit

I do it for fun and because sometimes it's helpful, but I don't think it has ever helped me with my job so I wouldn't recommend anyone setup a homelab to get a job.

I also have a lot of stuff I do in my homelab that I wouldn't do at work. Like flashing a RAID controller into an HBA so I could use ZFA or even use ZFS at work.

Homelabs are a hobby, if you don't enjoy it don't do it.

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Plenty-Wonder6092@reddit

Home lab advice is for people looking to get out of the helpdesk, from your post I think you still are helpdesk? If so yes homelab & as someone who does hiring homelab beats out easily cheated on certs every time.

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misanthable@reddit

Yeah I totally get that. Tech’s turned into this weird grind culture where you’re expected to live and breathe work even after hours.

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ScreamingVoid14@reddit

I was interviewing people for a Infosec position. There were people who had a whole home lab with a firewall. There were people who hadn't changed the default password on their router.

The issue was that it was hard to believe someone would take our security seriously if they weren't doing it at home rather than anything intrinsic about having a home lab.

My advice: you don't have to run a whole rack at home, but be able to show that you are at least making an effort to continue learning.

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1a2b3c4d_1a2b3c4d@reddit

No other field expects that kind of personal devotion, right??

No other field lets you start at $15/hr for help desk and go as quickly as you can up to $125/hr just based upon what you know.

IT is great in that the sky is the limit on how much you can make based upon how quickly you learn and how quickly you can get promoted or just find a better job at a better company.

Most careers, even with degrees, do not offer that type of upward advancement.

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sylarrrrr@reddit

I have a home lab purely because I enjoy messing with stuff 20 years in it and still interested in it.

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ShadowCaster0476@reddit

The people that have home labs aren’t just doing it for the work experience.

Most of the people I know are curious about the technology and want to master it not just put in the time.

They also will use it for media server, addition firewalls or some other use for their own lives.

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AhYesTheSoldier@reddit

I have a colleague who preaches home learning. No, I don't want to spend another hour a day when I can do absolutely anything else to relax.

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I_RATE_HATS@reddit

You're absolutely right. Nobody should be working in their free time. If they want you to be enthusiastic and passionate about systems administration, they can pay you for the time you're running a lab. Do they do this crap with devs?

"Oh. You've gotta run your own test environment. and test in your own time. We only pay you for prod. You should be enthusiastic about it"

That said I've always had a homelab. It's just a desktop. Haven't had to have a rack full of old cisco crap since dynamips. I've been working with x86 virtualization since 2005.

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Sandfish0783@reddit

It’s a competitive market, like it or not, right or not, if others do things to get a competitive edge such as contributing to open source, homelabbing, blogging, certificates, those are advantages.

I lab because I love it, and it’s definitely helped when applying for some jobs, and it hasn’t for others. But leverage what advantages you can and are reasonable, if labbing isn’t for you find another way to prove that you’re focused on continued education and growth, those are the aspects that labbing highlights. IT is a constantly changing field and technology outpaces us all, proving that you’re at least attempting to keep up goes a long way.

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nerdyviking88@reddit

For those that are running homelabs, it's not a 'job'. It's a hobby.

If you dont like it as a hobby, don't do it.

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Resident-Artichoke85@reddit

I agree and push for a lab for everything I support at work. I need to be able to test/break/fix without affecting production. The downside is I can't get new gear/new tech into the lab without approval first.

In that case I take used gear home (signed out) and build my own lab with product demos. Once I know what I'm talking about I can pitch it to management for approval. I return the used gear from my home lab back to work to get surplused (auctions after the hard drives are removed and destroyed).

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pointlessone@reddit

"Tell me about the dental work you do in your spare time."

"Tell us about your off the books law practice you do, just for funsies."

"Why should we take you seriously as a farmer if you're not farming at home?"

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iama_bad_person@reddit

I spent 4 years getting a degree, in my personal time, so I am attractive to IT Managers (and HR.)

I spent time getting certificates, in my personal time, so I am attractive to IT Managers.

I run a home lab, in my personal time, so I am attractive to more IT managers.

I don't see these as anything different than they are: proof you can do X, Y and Z. If you can do X and Y but the other guy is can do and is passionate about Z then you don't complain that they pick the other dude.

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AttapAMorgonen@reddit

I shouldn't have to dedicate every moment of my private life for, like, months working on some personal project I have no interest in just to be able to crawl out of a shitty helpdesk role. No other field expects that kind of personal devotion, right??

Of course other fields expect that kind of personal devotion, a common trope in other fields is "go to a trade school/university."

That would be your personal time to pick up new skills..

I have worked in a number of industries, IT, HVAC, Appliance Repair, Security Camera installations, etc. You need experience doing the work before you just go to a company, unless they plan to include training.

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RikiWardOG@reddit

some personal project I have no interest in just to be able to crawl out of a shitty helpdesk role

No, but you need to show experience if you're applying to a non jr. role. My guess is you're applying to positions above your experience level. Also the market is shit. If you don't have anything making you stick out, you're going to have a bad time in this market.

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Invspam@reddit

you've hit it on the nail in that it is a mental thing but for every person in this job that's in it for the money, there's another who loves it because it is their hobby too. you call it devotion but i cant picture myself doing anything else. ok sure, i'd be lying if wouldn't prefer a couple more hours of sleep everyday but i'd be hard pressed to find something that pays me for something im good at AND do it in my pajamas.

i feel like you just need a mental reset and approach it differently. the trick is to find something you actually care about, something that could save you time or money, and make that your actual project. sometimes it could be very specific to your needs and there isn't a ready built solution out there.

ill give you an example. i needed an alert that tells me not just when it rains, but when it rains hard enough for me to bother getting the rain barrels out to collect the rainwater. so i wrote an automation that would query a weather api and based on the results, it would slack me a message only when some threshold is met. you do you, rekindle your spark.

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eat-the-cookiez@reddit

I’ve been on both sides. You don’t need a full on home lab, just something to show you keep learning and aren’t stagnating.

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hurkwurk@reddit

I have a rule for my staff.... NEVER WORK FOR FREE. bill your time.

if management has heartache about it, it can be discussed and corrected going forward, but we will not be playing the game of having employees living in fear of what is personal or work time. fuck that.

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Bright_Arm8782@reddit

I've never had a homelab, made my way up to cloud engineer over 20 years, most of those as senior system admin.

I will study on my own time for exams, but if I'm doing that it's either because my current job offers something for it or I want some CV ammunition for the next job.

This is my job, not my life, not my hobby, certainly not my passion.

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PaisleyComputer@reddit

Define your burn out. Burnt out managing people? Or burnt out managing tech? I find people are obnoxious, Id rather devote my energy to tech. I know if I were to elevate to manager, I'd burn out in <90 days

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Nakatomi2010@reddit

Homelabs are an interesting concept.

For the record, I have one, and I use it fairly extensively, however, it's also rapidly becoming an outdated concept. The folks in /r/Homelab would likely argue with me on this point, however, in my experience, this is the case.

I first spun up my homelab when I worked for Circuit City as a means of trying to better hone my server administration skills. My first "server" was Windows Home Server, the one that ran Server 2003, and then I got the 2008 version. When WHS was discontinued I moved on to actual Windows Server, created my Active Directory domain, etc, etc.

The key thing to know here though is that my wife and I had asynchronous schedules. While my wife worked a 9-5 job, and I worked for Circuit City with varying hours, there'd be times where she wasn't around, and I could focus on labbing things out on my time, versus our time.

Eventually I got into a 9-5 job, and the time I spent in the homelab started to fall off a bit, for various reasons.

One reason is that now that my wife and I have synchronous schedules, I'd rather spend time with her than in my lab. Another reason is just the cost of keeping up with it. Electricity aside, there's ongoing hardware costs, from buying new gear, to replacing failing gear.

But the main reason my homelab isn't as useful as it once was is cloud services. With more and more organizations throwing shit into the cloud, it's harder for me to keep my lab running because I can't just buy hardware and run it into the ground. Now I have to look into buying cloud services and moving my hardware costs into cloud service costs, which let's be honest, servers would cost more to run in the cloud than on consumer hardware.

I can kludge some things, like I have a Microsoft 365 Developer instance, which is free Microsoft 365 for 50 "people", which I've built into my homelab, giving me some cloud services, but not as much as some businesses would like to see.

And that's going to be the rub about IT people asking you if you have a lab for things or not. It's old school people who likely had their own labs not realizing the irrelevance of a homelab these days because so much can't be labbed at home anymore.

Not that a homelab isn't still useful. My current employer sees the value of my homelab, and they'll actually let me use it during business hours, because I'll often test things in my lab before pushing it to production at work. If I were to quit, they'd lose the lab. It's not like we haven't asked for a lab, however, my homelab lets me butcher how I deploy things so that I can test things quickly, and if I break shit in the process, I'm not breaking a shared resource, I'm breaking my resource, which I then lean how to fix and such.

This has come in handy recently because I've converted my homelab from VMware to Hyper-V, which my office is starting to do now, and I have a VMM instance that I did upgrades on, and as we were deploying VMM at the office I was able to very quickly jump on a SQL server issue they had because I'd had a similar problem in my homelab.

The key is to just make sure you can access the homelab while at work, and use company time to work on it. Not all companies are receptive to this though.

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Relative-Reality-981@reddit

I just don't want to pay for the electricity to run and cool a Homelab.

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Relative-Reality-981@reddit

That's why my homelab is at work =)

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sashalav@reddit

When I was looking for a candidate for a position, I asked for their github links. I wanted to see how they think, what they like doing. The projects themselves did not have to be even related to the project they would be working on. I was just looking for someone who can be excited and a little obsessive about some somewhat related tech.

AI can replace so much of the basic skills, I wanted to see that I am getting someone who shows some personality that AI cannot replace just yet.

The person I picked has a few school projects on their github and some attempts at the app they were excited about. When we first spoke, he talked about that app than about the work I had for them. That is why they got hired.

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Etrigone@reddit

I agree, but I see (without agreeing with them to be 100% clear) why they ask it.

They want people with "passion" is the claim, but they want people who are frankly obsessed. The kind of people who would, for example, skip their kid's graduation or pass on a date just to nerd out. A small amount may be normal, as in you tinker but can put it down any time you want. That's not what they want. They want the obsessive to the point of it being unhealthy.

It's like saying you need workers for a cigarette factory and you can smoke for free as long as you're there, but "we're only seeking employees who are heavily addicted smokers".

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2BfromNieRAutomata@reddit

i dont think it is required. I have 6.5 years experience and never had a homelab. Don't get me wrong, i do use computers at home. The closest thing to a homelab is my plex server, but that was like set it and forget it.

I manage to land roles without an issue. You may need to work on your resume or personality. People want to work with pleasant people.

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forsurebros@reddit

How else will you learn. It sounds like you do not want to be in IT or like the field. If you cannot take the time and interest then you will stay where you are.but I guess it depends what you are applying for.

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sheikhyerbouti@reddit

Do what everyone else is doing:

Lie.

Pick a technology that you're vaguely interested in and write up a homelab setup.

Currently, I'm telling people that I'm working on a local LLM server - that way I look like I'm both "passionate" about technology and buying into the AI bullshit that is so prevalent these days.

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lungbong@reddit

My homelab consists of Sickchill, Radar, SabNZB, Transmission, Plex and Homeassistant.

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wasserbox@reddit

My home-lab is production.

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MonkyDeathRocket@reddit

I usually work between 9 and 10 hours, the feedback I've gotten so far is, he's really good, let's give him more. My pay has gone up as well, so I've been putting up with it, but the stress and other factors is starting to affect my health. The last thing I want to do is anything IT related when I finally quit for the day. I'm weighing options now on how to gracefully deal with the situation as my workload has increased and my resources have decreased.

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WWWVWVWVVWVVVVVVWWVX@reddit

I have yet to see a job posting that says a home lab is a requirement. Nobody is forcing anyone to do IT work outside of IT. There's a difference between someone watching a youtube video and standing up a pointless AD environment at home and doing things you like. I've automated a ton of things around the house, host a media server, run containers for various services, I have a personal cloud environment through Azure, etc. Nobody put a gun to my head and made me do it; I wanted to.

Having said all of that, just because you don't think people should be working on personal IT projects outside of work doesn't mean that there are going to be a ton of applicants you're up against that are.

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bythepowerofboobs@reddit

That basically means you don't have the experience they are looking for. No-one cares about a home lab for high level positions, however employers DO care about taking ownership and knowing you will be available when shit hits the fan.

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Regen89@reddit

5 years from T1 to a manager and burned out

Uhhh??? Is this a small org or something, because that's incredible.

You should really explain why you are feeling burned out in a post like this too, because it generally happens for very different reasons across different roles (customer facing support, ops, management)

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Makav3lli@reddit

Homelabs are for the mega nerds. I do this shit because it pays well not because I like it - I’m not working 8 hours and the occasional after hours work a few times a month then also mucking with this shit in my free time

If I need to learn something new I’ll do it on company time (SMART goals everyone!)

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wideace99@reddit

In the beginning, the IT&C job market was only for geeks only who were truly passionate about the domain and having a homelab was a dream coming true especially based on the hefty wages from that moment since there are not so many geeks.

Today, the employers don't appreciate any more geeks (translated in wages) but only the cheapest workforce ready available so your argument is valid.

Crappy wages = barely do the job

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RCTID1975@reddit

I don't think this is what the field expects at all. In fact, as a hiring manager, I really couldn't care less.

You having a home lab doesn't tell me anything at all. I have no way of knowing what you have setup, or if it's setup correctly.

You wouldn't hire a plumber just because they have a sink in their house would you?

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FUCKUSERNAME2@reddit

It's not a requirement for any job. No job posting has "must have a homelab" in their requirements. It's simply an additional way to exhibit your skills. If you don't want to do it then find other ways to exhibit your skills.

I shouldn't have to dedicate every moment of my private life for, like, months working on some personal project I have no interest in just to be able to crawl out of a shitty helpdesk role.

You are removing all nuance from the situation. I spend MAYBE one hour a week tinkering in my homelab nowadays. It's still one of the most valuable things on my resume, mainly because it's a conversation starter where I get to exhibit to the interviewer that I at least somewhat know what I'm talking about.

No other field expects that kind of personal devotion, right??

Wrong. It's common across many, if not most, specialized fields to have to take your work home with you. Don't get me wrong, it's still exploitation and is morally disagreeable, but it's by no means unique to IT.

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WhereDidThatGo@reddit

I don't care about homelabs. I think the idea is a little outdated; homelabs used to be built by equipment you could take home from work. I feel like many companies have tightened their policies about employees taking home old equipment. Also, VMware was standard for homelabs but now Broadcom is terrible. More things are cloud now, and there are a lot of free cloud learning platforms available, which I think are sort of a replacement for a homelab.

The hard part in my mind is getting an interview. If you have gotten interviews, your resume must be pretty good. I'd look to see if you can do some mock interviews and get feedback that way.

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davidbrit2@reddit

Same. I'm a DBA/data warehouse architect/data engineer. You know what I don't fuckin' do in my free time? Database administration, data warehousing, and data engineering.

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dustojnikhummer@reddit

Homelabs are for people who enjoy it as a hobby, not as a second job.

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BlackFlames01@reddit

The global population has increased a lot since our parents' and grandparents' days. That means more labor supply and more competition. Just reality. If I have to advance professionally during personal time, so be it. I am arguably living in the best time in human history; our ancestors were far worse off than us and poverty was common.

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techgirl67@reddit

Never had a home lab and never will. What I do with my time outside of work is no one’s business. Not sure I would want to work for anyone who cared about what I did during my non-work hours.

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Grrl_geek@reddit

Thank you! Not only do I not have the space in my tiny house, I do not have the time. I'll work at 110% while I'm working for you.

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TheStupidDeskTech@reddit (OP)

That's my mentality. When I'm at work, I am glad to pick up whatever you want to throw at me. But after hours, I'm not about to be like: "Sorry, gotta miss the holidays, I've got a certification test to do!!"

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uptimefordays@reddit

Unfortunately, infrastructure engineering roles have not offered on the job training in many years. This leaves basically a few paths:

1) get an ABET accredited degree (easiest path that opens the most doors) 2) homelab and upskill in your off time (gets you hands on “experience” with systems) 3) finding jobs that offer reach projects or opportunities for advancement (rare)

For people who didn’t take path 1, path 2 is a better option than trying to find an entry point to path 3.

It didn’t used to be like this (at least in the late 1990s to early 2000s on the Windows side), but that’s the thing about the old days… They’re the old days. What worked for people who entered the field 20+ years ago isn’t really relevant to early career folks today.

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gamebrigada@reddit

I am a huge proponent of putting your homelab on your resume if you homelab. However, if you don't it is by no means required.

The reason I say put it on, is because by law I cannot ask questions that don't pertain to the job, so I can't for example ask "Do you homelab". I can ask questions about technologies but as you can probably imagine it will get old pretty fast asking "Have you tinkered with AD". By putting your homelab experience on your resume, opens the door for me to ask about it, and I can potentially count your hobby level experience as experience.

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Grrl_geek@reddit

Well, not yet...

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rcp9ty@reddit

When is the last time you met an accountant that wasn't asked tax questions at the family Christmas party, or the lawyer that wasn't asked legal questions from friends without being on retainer, or the stock broker isn't asked about the market when they are relaxing on the weekends, or the mechanic asked to help a friend or family with their car, or the HVAC guy working on his day off to replace a capacitor in an air conditioner. If you don't want to work on your time off go work some meaningless job at fast food or retail... if you're burnt out from IT stuff go work at a retail chain during the holidays... Or how about working at a gas station... How many times does someone point a gun at you and ask for cash at your current job. ( This happened to me )

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Tymanthius@reddit

My home lab is there b/c I got curious about something and wanted to fiddle around with it.

I have had ZERO windows devices in my home lab for decades even tho my work is all windows. I recently spun up a Win11 VM b/c I wanted to test some things. And even so, it's off unless I'm actively trying something.

Your home lab should be fun for you, otherwise don't bother.

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woodsbw@reddit

This. The home lab thing isn't because it is a "requirement", it is because, if you hire someone who likes what they do enough to play around with it for enjoyment....they tend to be better at the job.

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CommandSignificant27@reddit

I am going to have to disagree when I am working in my home lab it is a fun hobby for me not a chore that I dread. When I get off work I am excited to learn new skills about things I am interested in.

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DifferentSpecific@reddit

You don't have to spend a cent or a second on anything. You can stay right where you're at. If you want something better, then some extra effort will likely be needed.

The old saying still applies: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got."

Personally I enjoy the benefits of being able to get away from cloud privacy and cost issues. My lab is tailored towards that, but I've also dovetailed in some tech to future proof myself.

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deefop@reddit

You don't need to home lab. Do certs instead. The process of studying will teach you a lot. Beyond that, forgive my inner boomer: suck it the fuck up. We live a life of wealth and luxury that 99.999999% of humans that ever lived could not even dream of. You work fewer hours for more money than almost everyone in history. A little personal study time is not going to kill you.

It's a bitch of a job market out there. I got laid off in May and finally start a new job Monday. I did a cert during that time, and I've already started another one because I feel behind. I don't feel that the universe or society owe me shit. I want better jobs, and more wealth. If you aren't willing to improve yourself over time, you will be left behind.

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OneSeaworthiness7768@reddit

Expecting someone with a decent history of experience to be working on a home lab is unnecessary IMO, unless it’s a position that they aren’t directly experienced in where labbing in free time would be relevant and helpful to transitioning to a new area. A career doesn’t have to be a hobby. Though a lot of IT people who make IT their entire identity feel otherwise.

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8923ns671@reddit

Home labbing hasn't seemed to make a difference for me. All employers really care about it work experience. Everything else is a check box (degree) or extraneous.

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Valdaraak@reddit

I get that's what the field expects

It does not. Most employers care if you're qualified. Not if you poke around with tech at home. The ones that do care about that should be passed on.

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Mattyj273@reddit

When you have family and kids, there's no way to have the time for a homelab. I would just say no, I'm too busy putting in extra time at work completing real world projects.

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Sasataf12@reddit

The advice I keep seeing is that you have to have a home-lab, etc.

That's just bad advice. If you're passionate enough to build a homelab, go for it, But I've never seen that as a must-have (or even a nice-to-have).

So unless your interviewers have told you that you lost to another person because they had a homelab, you're blaming the wrong thing.

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mr_mgs11@reddit

A friend of mine in the industry for almost 20 years has the same viewpoint as you. He will NOT work on certs etcs in his free time. He is underpaid by at LEAST $60k and bitches about not having money. You get out of life what you put into it. I would rather stay home and play video games then go to the gym most days, but I still train five or six days a week because I want to be healthy and look good. Your career is the same thing.

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redeuxx@reddit

I'm making a couple assumptions here ... that you even though you may lead people, you aren't a manager and from your 5-year timeline ... you don't have the technical chops to move up in a technical role, and you don't have the managerial experience to be do management full time. With that said, no one is taking you seriously enough to move you up in management or technical roles ... and this has nothing to do with homelabs.

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vNerdNeck@reddit

I get it.. but he's my hot take. If you are looking and demanding WLB in your 20s, you gonna be struggling in your 30s and and 40s.

The first 10 years of your career is where you build your foundation that takes care of the later half. By skimping on your own training, you will eventually be left behind.

Don't work 40 hours for someone else, but then forget to work on yourself.

There is always something new coming down the pipe, thinking the training and learning is gonna happen during company time is unrealistic and will only be prone to disappoint you.

You are in a field that there are folks that do spend a lot of their personal time learning, cause quite frankly... there is a lot to learn especially in the early days. You don't have to do it, but you are gonna continue to lose out to opportunities (especially early one) to the ones that do.

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patmorgan235@reddit

If you invest more in your education early in your career you will advance faster and your total earnings can be much higher.

If you're happy with where you're at in your career then sure there's no reason to Homelab (unless you find it fun)

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CanadianPropagandist@reddit

The C suite weaponized enthusiastic hobbyists 25+ years ago, myself included, and now it's the industry norm.

Frankly it's fucked and unprofessional and I wish I had been less naive about it, but here we are.

Dipshit founders in tech will now claim to work 24 hours a day.. The whole industry needs a psych evaluation.

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AverageMuggle99@reddit

I’m totally with you. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit at the computer. I’ve got an interest in tech, but I’m not sat at home making home labs. I’ve got kids and a wife and hobbies that don’t generally involve a PC.

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DeepFakeMySoul@reddit

Don't do it bro. You are right, you "shouldn't" have to. I however, do it just for fun, and the less people that have home labs, the better my prospects.

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Master-IT-All@reddit

Please name one career where you have possibility of advancement and high income that doesn't require continual education?

-It's not a doctor, nor lawyer. They're constantly working into the evening.

-It's not a software developer. If you think you're working extra hours... try actually working 16 hour days for a few months

Truth is, if you want a job where you never need to do more than show up. You're gonna start each customer encounter with, "Welcome to McDonalds..." --And even then I bet you have to learn new burgers occasionally--

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bageloid@reddit

-It's not a doctor, nor lawyer. They're constantly working into the evening.

My Wife who is a doctor doesn't work late into the evening and gets paid time off for CE. As for Lawyers, they are billing for those hours.

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reallycoolvirgin@reddit

I never know if I should bring up my homelab in interviews or not. The primary use-case of my home lab aside from my website is automating downloading movies/TV shows and hosting it for me/friends/family through jellyfin/arr setup. While it is really cool and was fun to set up... always unsure how employers would see that.

I guess I shouldn't apply to the FBI

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Ssakaa@reddit

It's really easy to talk about a homelab setup, even like that one, without listing all the services you run. It's much more about how you run them. What technologies are you using under the hood? What networking gear/hypervisors/container systems/control planes/devops and adjacent tools, etc. have you played with, and what related issues have you solved with it? Set up QoS for the wife's video streams so your labbing doesn't impact it? Note that. VPN'd all your (and your family's devices) traffic back through home so you can securely use Starbuck's wifi? Note that. Set that up as a split tunnel so video streams don't melt your upload bandwidth? Note that. Spun all that up on Kubernetes from a git repo, then migrated that into being hosted within that k8s environment? Set up some light automation to update containers automatically with rolling updates so your services stay up? Whatever.

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illicITparameters@reddit

There's no need to bring it up. I always had a lab but I never mentioned it. I used it to learn new skills/software I could possibly introduce or deploy to the companies I worked for, and that is the stuff I brought up.

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Plastic_Willow734@reddit

I’d rather make 55k at a place that respects my work life balance than 90k at a place where I’m expected or guilted into hopping on a fire on a Saturday morning

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Benificial-Cucumber@reddit

I'd accept the latter for a couple of years, but as a long term career I completely agree.

I'm currently working an average of 60-70hr weeks, but I'm accepting it because I've just been promoted to Head of IT after the last guy left, and I'm trading a year's sanity for the opportunity to "just give it a shot" without losing the benefits that come with my tenure here. I'm giving myself until next Christmas to learn to manage it, and if it's still unreasonable I'll be moving on.

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25toten@reddit

Nobody on their death bed is grateful for all the extra hours they worked.

Especially unpaid.

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Plastic_Willow734@reddit

What’s more important though, “team player” on your quarterly review? Or spending time doing the things you like with the people you love?

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12_nick_12@reddit

Yes this. My current job pays lower than average, but the balance is great.

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Ssakaa@reddit

I would never say you need to. It's another potential source of skills for the vast majority of people that don't get exposure to anything new in their current day job, want to do something more or different from their current day job, and can't convince their employer to train them on company time so they can develop the skills to leave said employer. And, I also wouldn't say you need to 'cause there's enough competition among people who actually enjoy doing technology related stuff in more than just one aspect of their life. If you're not that person, by all means, compete on the level you're on with the people that match your level of interest.

Basically, it's the norm because, if you have an employer that's consistently providing opportunity to learn, work with changing tech over time, potentially move up through technical positions doing that, etc... outside of a few serious life changing events, you're probably not out competing for a new job externally. If you're asking the question of how to compete better for an external job search, you're putting yourself in the other boat. The one where your employer isn't enabling you, so... you either stagnate or enable yourself.

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Savings_Art5944@reddit

Nice opinion. Next.

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mdervin@reddit

Oh bullshit. In my 30+ years, thousands of interviews nobody asked me about a home lab. (and this includes interviews with Palantir & AWS).

HomeLabs and Certificates exists in the rare chance the hiring manager has a stroke during the process and thinks working on a bunch of crappy old equipment where nothing of value is at risk and studying a bunch of marketing materials is valuable to resetting passwords.

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ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit

I like to complicate myself and that's why I have a homelab. Not because I need or I want. In fact, I resigned from a company because they expected me to get trained on a tool they use on *my* personal time. That's a no-no.

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Responsible_Tart_393@reddit

Professional sports expect that kind of time commitment and effort. And not just the athletes. The coaches and staff too. Yes, they get paid for their time at the highest levels, but they spent huge amounts of personal time to get to that level.

The equivalent for other settings would be management and executives. Similar expectations and pay but [most] put the time in to get there.

If OP doesn't want to get to the big leagues with big pay, then chill 9-5 and take what you can get. Some people can get to the higher levels on just 9-5 and some can't. That's ok, not everyone can or wants to advance at that pace.

But with the experience OP stated, sounds like more time on the resume and interview skills would benefit more than a home lab.

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isthisyournacho@reddit

I don’t think having a homelab is a requirement, but knowing something about the domain is. You’ll get lucky if someone teaches you kubernetes or something on the job - it does happen though. To stack the cards in your favor there you either need to gravitate toward that type of work at your employer (which means trying to move away from some of the nontechnical bs that people try and make you do.) the alternative is homework, which I agree it’s very difficult in many scenarios to find time. That’s just the IT field.

One thing I noticed is that employers won’t often be prescriptive about your upskilling in marketable areas, but if you are aggressive about upskilling and working with your leadership maybe you can work that lab or do that study on company time, if even just a little.

Good luck, I think we all struggle here.

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bpusef@reddit

I shouldn't have to dedicate every moment of my private life for, like, months working on some personal project I have no interest in just to be able to crawl out of a shitty helpdesk role.

Well this is hyperbole. Having a hobby outside of work hours related to your field of study is not dedicating every moment of your private life.

People look at your resume and interview you and are concerned you just do this for a job and have no passion in it, and that concerns them that they'll invest in onboarding and training you only for you to get bored or take a different role because you're just working in tech because you heard it was a good line of work. Or worse, you won't have a real propensity for the job because you actually are not a technical minded person.

Put yourself in the company's shoes - you have 4 candidates, one guy has a strictly professional interest in IT and has only just started working in the field, and another guy has a genuine passion and has been doing it his whole life. Who am I gonna pick? It's not that I'm forcing you to do anything, I'm picking the best candidate for ME, not what's good for you.

Try running your own company and having to hire people before you form an opinion on what hiring managers should and shouldn't "demand." It's a competitive world, and you're only going to win roles by being the most attractive candidate with the tiny amount of information you have when interviewing and hiring someone.

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Fit_Indication_2529@reddit

IT vet here 30 years in the field. I totally get where you’re coming from: burnout is real, and expecting people to devote all their personal time to home labs or extra projects is rough and unsustainable. Your time outside of work is your life, not a free extension of your job. That frustration is valid. At the same time, the reality of IT is that it’s highly competitive, fast-moving, and uneven. Some people have natural talent, some have networks, and some have soft skills that give them an edge. Others have to work extra hard sometimes late nights, weekends, or 80-hour weeks to level the playing field. I personally had to make sacrifices early on, giving up a family while putting in many long hours, to get to a point in my career where I no longer have to live like that. There are ways to advance without burning out: focus on building visible results at work that show your value (projects completed, problems solved, processes improved), make connections with people in your company and industry who can vouch for your work, document your achievements clearly on your resume and jobsites, and target roles that actually reward experience and leadership rather than just home labs. In other words, make the work you already do count for more, rather than piling on extra unpaid hours.

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Zenkin@reddit

I only did home lab stuff for maybe the first three years of my career. And I did that because I hated the jobs and wanted to move on. After a few hops, I finally found an employer that didn't suck.

Just be aware that the actual results of your lab do not matter. It's really just familiarizing yourself with a lot of different topics so you can speak about them intelligently, and you have SOME level of hands-on experience so you can get up to speed more quickly. If you don't have interest in these things, that's.... going to make for a tough career. Even though I don't "practice" my trade after hours, I do a lot of reading during work hours, and actually enjoying this stuff makes it a lot easier to keep going.

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somesketchykid@reddit

Getting out of helpdesk is tough because you dont get an opportunity to work on infrastructure, and i sure as heck wont hire you for my infrastructure team unless you have oodles of experience, especially with things like Change Management and general caution

So, can you work on infrastructure? If i ask you to spin me up 3 new domain controllers to replace the 3 old ones, and decommission the old, can you do that today with no downtime?

If the answer is no, how do you get that experience?

There is your answer.

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fanofreddit-@reddit

Home labs are for your own benefit. For example if I were looking for a job I would spin up whatever type of environment that uses similar tech to what I want to support. At minimum doing that would at least allow you to speak intelligently about it in an interview. It also gives you an opportunity to learn hands on for potential certs that you may see as being desired in the postings you’re interested in. I’m not sure how you would plan on accomplishing either of those things easily while on the job if you don’t have those responsibilities today. Without home labs I would have set my career progression back 5-10 years.

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Commercial_Growth343@reddit

Some employers do very little for training, so in those cases what else are you supposed to do to upgrade your skills ? how do you learn the new version of XYZ at a place like that? Or worst your employers insists on staying on old technology. That is when you have to really do it yourself. This industry is always changing, so at some point to stay current many people find they have to do training on their own, on the side, at home, or whatever.

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0zer0space0@reddit

I hear you. Though I wouldn’t say no other profession expects or does this. Plenty do, but their “homelabbing” just looks different. Lawyers read up on case law or other new legal changes. Doctors read up on research studies. Some even do the research. Teachers do continuing education credits. Professors pickup research. Software engineers build personal software or contribute to open source. Artists draw, draw, draw. Designers create or add to portfolios. Writers tend to write things outside their typical best sellers. Carpenters build a deck for their own home and use it for advertising themselves. The list goes on. Very few jobs out there that don’t spill over into personal time in some way.

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SoonerMedic72@reddit

There are other fields that do this, but most of them are licensed fields and require a bunch of continuing education to maintain your license outside of work. When I was a medic, the 911 shop had us come in and clock in for the CEs but the hospital told us we had to do it in our own time. It was only like 80 hours every two years and some of our other licensure requirements filled like half of it though.

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Additional-Coffee-86@reddit

As someone hiring, I will always value someone with a homelab over those that don’t. Sorry not sorry. The minor amount of effort it takes to spin up a virtualized environment and understand the key aspects of basic business technology needs is a requirement especially for hiring someone from help desk to sysadmin.

If I’m hiring a sysadmin I need to know that you can build a system. Otherwise I’m going with someone with more experience.

I get it, it sucks for you to spend time outside of work improving your skillset, but when hiring I grade on four aspects: Systems, Coding/automation, curiosity, and personality. A homelab improves 3 of those scores.

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arctic-lemon3@reddit

See this is a really, really difficult problem to tackle, because of how accessible our work is.

Fundamentally, I think everyone agrees with you. There should be absolutely no requirement to spend time working or learning outside of hours. But the truth is, a lot of us are just really, really interested in technology. My homelab doesn't exist because I think it helps my career, it exists because I find it extremely fun to tinker around with this stuff.

You shouldn't have to, the problem is, some of the competition is doing it. Not out of ambition or maliciousness, just out of pure passion for the field. I honestly can't even think of a solution to this issue.

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fleecetoes@reddit

I agree. Having time away from work is the only thing keeping me sane sometimes. The last thing I want to do on a weekend is more IT work.

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AdeelAutomates@reddit

Welcome to IT.

It evolves way too much to stay stagnate. If you feel the experience you have is quality, building you up still and it matches the roles you are looking for. You can ignore labbing.

But if you feel you work is making you do A,B & C and you want to branch your career out to D,E & F. There is not much you can do but learn D,E & F independently.

The reason its so popular to recommend labbing/studying days is because a lot has changed in the last few years that it's hard to catch up organically.

For instance, I was a level 3 helpdesk/sysadmin at a traditional IT gig before becoming a cloud engineer. I had to explore such a massive new world on my own time in order to get the role that organically didn't give me the skills from past experiences.

Some things carried over like Powershell, AD/EntraID, Servers/Networking, etc.. But the depths of Azure, Infrastructure as Code, Pipelines, APIs, etc were things I had to learn on my own.

Would I go through the days of working 8 hours, studying on my free time 3-4 hours while managing my life? Yes I would. Because the career jump I made financially, in terms of work being the kind I wanted (not support work but straight systems work) and now having the flexibility to learn new things during work hours to only propel me further.

I don't know where I would be had I not gone through the period in my life.

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illicITparameters@reddit

No one has a gun to your head. Just don't come here bitching like you are now.

If you won't do things to further your own career beyond the helpdesk, no one else will.

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osprey1349@reddit

Nature of the beast. I've gotten insanely frustrated with it at times over the years but its also whats propelled me from an associates degree level 1 position to a senior solutions position with no additional formal education inbetween. Its just a grind and dedication to get over the hump at times, but do it for you not the company. This wasnt and isnt always the case, but at year 5 like you mentioned is about when I recall was the most grueling. Job hop when you get stuck if theres no clear path to advancement where you are.

Youre entitled to nothing. The world isnt fair. The game sucks. But you need to find a strategy to set you apart from everyone else out there, because nothing will come easy or be handed to you in this field and I found that out the hard way early in my IT career. Find your thing.

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iamltr@reddit

yea no, i aint gonna work on my offhours