I still barely believe it honestly. I’m a student “freshly” outta school with no experience, and I’ve been struggling finding a job for a while.
I had an (first) job interview recently and while I didn’t have much to offer, I seemed to somewhat impress them with my home labbing. I run Proxmox at home for my self-hosted things and got a decent amount of experience with it, and it’s what they use a lot as well. It’s not that common in my age group to be interested in stuff like this, apparently.
Anyway, this is barely worthy of a post, but I’m really excited. I don’t really know how it’ll work out as I still got plenty to learn, but it’s a big step forwards for me.
When I interview entry-level IT operations candidates, discussion of home labs puts the candidate at the top of the list, all other things being equal. It’s hands-on experience and demonstrates an interest in tinkering… and will show that the candidate knows how to solve problems (including how to Google problems).
Only once has that strategy failed me, and it wasn’t even a terrible fit - just a bad one.