Why I started writing about Homelabbing
Hey Friends,
For a long time, I thought that a career in tech meant software development and probably webdev or ML at that. This is comically short sighted especially, given that my father works in IT and that’s how I became interested in tech in the first place. Still, there was something about my undergraduate experience that led me to believe, you either became a software developer, or you went into academia. Having despised my first internship as a junior full stack developer, and having always loved teaching, I decided Academia was the way for me.
Reconsidering Academia
About 3 years, one master’s degree, and some time as a PhD student later, I don’t think I want to be a researcher but I still want to teach.
I thought it was doomed - that the only way to teach was in academia and so I had to make a choice: stick it out as a researcher so that I can teach, or give up on teaching and go into industry. That is, I thought that right up until I started homelabbing.
Discovering My Love for Systems
My favourite parts about tech have always been tinkering with systems. I love configuration, optimizing environments to suit me perfectly, and understanding the backbone of things. Looking back, it’s obvious that I should’ve been diving into devops, systems administration, cloud engineering, and the like long ago. Even better, there’s tons of teaching opportunities both online, and in-person via certifications and continued learning.
For me, what started out as a mini-pc with pi-hole installed on it, is becoming the career I’d like to pursue. But, it took a reframing of what “career in tech” means and what it means to teach, for me to get here.
The Narrow View of Tech Careers
Now, as a teaching assistant, I’ve seen lots of students fall into the same narrow view of a tech career that I did during my undergraduate years - webdev or ML, vs Academia. This makes the current hiring landscape even more harsh. Students are funneling themselves into the same positions - junior front/back/fullstack web dev roles - exacerbating the scarcity of these jobs and putting students through more stress.
Exploring Tech Holistically
Of course, you can’t fix the challenge of finding your first job, nor the issue of the current hiring environment. But, you can branch out and compete in smaller niches giving yourself a better shot - hopefully also having more fun along the way.
That’s the point of Life and Lab - this newsletter and the youtube videos - helping students and early career techy folks, explore tech more holistically by sharing my homelab adventures. Nothing has been better for rekindling my love of tech than spinning up my homelab to tinker with industry DevOps, sysadmin, and cloud engineering, technologies. I want to share that with other people, especially people who know they want to “be in tech” but, maybe, aren’t sure how yet.
Why both Life and Lab?
The Lab part is easy. Obviously, technical skills are important and, if you’re like me, really fun to build. But, why do all the fluffy life stuff too?
Two reasons: learning tough skills is uncomfortable, and building a career is about more than just technical ability.
Resilience in Learning
Learning hard things takes time, and it’s easy to burn out, even when you love what you’re doing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my master’s in computer science education, my PhD research on behavior change, it’s that metaskills and mindset are so important.
It can sound corny, I know it did (and sometimes still does) to me, but taking a growth mindset, reframing failure as learning, being open to exploration, and habits like journaling are what make it possible to tackle challenging skills without losing steam.
Finding Joy
But it’s not just about productivity — it’s also about joy. I got into tech because I love it. I’m sure a lot of you did too. But so many times, I’ve seen my own mindset ruin that joy for me. Bad habits and thought patterns have introduced so much pointless stress, anger, and frustration — even in my hobby projects where there’s nothing at stake!
That’s why the Life section of Life and Lab matters. Because learning can be slow, uncomfortable, and disappointing but it can also be incredibly exciting and fun! Both feelings are inevitable, still, metaksills and mindset shifts can help ease the discomfort and help us find more of those exciting joyous moments to keep us going.
It is a skill knowing how to remind yourself to have fun, when to take a break, and when to push through a little more. One that I hope to foster in myself, and share with you along the way.
Conclusion
Homelabbing, and sharing about my learning online with you all, has given me an opportunity to teach while I learn, and to explore tech in a totally different way than I expected when I was in undergrad. I hope that both the technical and the metaskills side of things help you as much as it’s helping me!
Anyway, if you’re interested in homelab, infrastructure, and some of the mindset stuff I write about, here’s some more of my content you might like:
**Lab: **
**Life: **
Cheers,
Nathan Laundry