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As a developer, all of the time I spend working on hobby projects (and self-hosting has turned into a hobby) keep me up to date. It's how I learned Kubernetes,

by TkTech 5y ago

As a developer, all of the time I spend working on hobby projects (and self-hosting has turned into a hobby) keep me up to date. It's how I learned Kubernetes, it's how I learned Traefik, nginx, and apache before that. It's how I learned how the different packaging and distribution ecosystems work for many different languages and frameworks. I intentionally host and backup some things on AWS, GCloud, and Azure. Other things live on Intel NUCs. I administer a GSuite for the family. The list goes on and on. It gives you the chance to experiment with new tools and toys that you're unlikely to use at your current job. My long-winded point is that all of the things I've picked up have been invaluable to me at work, especially in my time as a contractor where I would be switching between many different stacks. If you want to find a "true" cost for self-hosting, you need to also treat it as training. I don't really believe it's any different from say, a woodworker that has a shop at home. They may spend the workday just doing framing, but odds are good they find the time to make a chair, a bird house, something to keep their skills sharp.

reaperducer 5y ago
As a developer, all of the time I spend working on hobby projects (and self-hosting has turned into a hobby) keep me up to date. True for some things, like things that are not at all related to your work. But your job should be actively trying to make you better at your job, and a better person. Large companies like the one I work for hire outside firms to offer classes to the employees for free, and on company time. If there is a new version of a piece of software that is significantly different from an old one, my company pays for the users to go to training, or to train online. This is very common for products like Office or the Adobe suite. But for some reason, as developers, we too often think that we're supposed to better ourselves on our own dime. If it benefits your current employer, the current employer should chip in.
mattowen_uk 5y ago
I used to think this too, which is why I was self-hosting (I'm the OP of this thread), but as I've got older, and my interests have shifted, along with no longer needing to be at the bleeding edge of my skill-set (I leave that stuff to the younglings these days), I found that managing my own infrastructure felt more like a chore than a hobby, more so if it's a 'production' system and not a 'lab' environment.

by TkTech 5y ago

reaperducer 5y ago

As a developer, all of the time I spend working on hobby projects (and self-hosting has turned into a hobby) keep me up to date. True for some things, like things that are not at all related to your work. But your job should be actively trying to make you better at your job, and a better person. Large companies like the one I work for hire outside firms to offer classes to the employees for free, and on company time. If there is a new version of a piece of software that is significantly different from an old one, my company pays for the users to go to training, or to train online. This is very common for products like Office or the Adobe suite. But for some reason, as developers, we too often think that we're supposed to better ourselves on our own dime. If it benefits your current employer, the current employer should chip in.

mattowen_uk 5y ago

I used to think this too, which is why I was self-hosting (I'm the OP of this thread), but as I've got older, and my interests have shifted, along with no longer needing to be at the bleeding edge of my skill-set (I leave that stuff to the younglings these days), I found that managing my own infrastructure felt more like a chore than a hobby, more so if it's a 'production' system and not a 'lab' environment.