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.
I agree. Definitely see more home hardware or cheap VPS related posts than work environment posts.
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.