Disclaimer: I’m no expert on this.
I realized recently there are two common types of Self Hosters here.
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I work in IT and host some services for my employer so we don’t have to rely on the big tech companies, for economic or other reasons.
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I self host some services at home or on a VPS, as a hobby or for other reasons, but nobody pays me to do that.
The answers people provide seem to vary greatly based on whether the commenter is in the #1 or #2 camp. I myself have gotten answers along the lines of, “why aren’t you acting more like a paid IT person?” and it’s a little off-putting.
How to resolve this? Could we refer to one group or the other differently?
Maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of this than is warranted and I’m the only one confused?
If nothing else, I will call out my hobby status from now on when posting/commenting here.
Edited to add: TIL. I’ll use these terms carefully in the future. Thanks!
Hmm, I think there are more people that are #1 and #2 the same time (not me though) and the bigger divide is between those that rent a VPS and those that run a homelab.
Probably where some of the attitude comes from. People are assuming that it’s paid IT people bringing their work home with them, which is a different case then a casual user trying out self-hosting without the broader background.
Although I haven’t seen this attitude myself so I suspect it’s not that common, and probably just a handful of users jumping to conclusions.
I agree. Definitely see more home hardware or cheap VPS related posts than work environment posts.