

IT is a very wide field, and maybe that generalization is actually not good
That was what set me off. I was having a bad morning and misread the tone to be more dismissive than it likely was.


IT is a very wide field, and maybe that generalization is actually not good
That was what set me off. I was having a bad morning and misread the tone to be more dismissive than it likely was.


I’ve misread the tone, I agree. I apologize for that. However, I find that his complaints were not about things that are always “fundamental core principals of working in IT”. For some, sure, but where I work I’m by far the employee with the most familiarity with CLI/powershell and scripting. Almost everything is done via a GUI or web interface if it can be. I would tell any of my coworkers that maybe IT isn’t for them.
I also, in a rush to finish, misremembered and incorrectly reread some of your words too quickly. You did not recommend the “clone a repo” solutions, you advised against them. Again, I apologize. I still am suspicious of this massive collection of self hosted services that work perfectly with each other after like 20 minutes of tweaking and little maintenance. That was what I was trying to imply with that section. I’ve lost close to a dozen 6-10 hour sessions on Saturdays pulling my hair out because I can’t seem to find out how to do some specific things that it seems like I need to do to make some “easy” new service to work with my setup. It’s like that Malcom in the Middle (?) clip of the dad 5 projects deep at the end of the day trying to fix some simple problem in the morning.
I’ll try to document some of my issues this weekend. I would honestly appreciate any help or recommendations.


That being said, I think there’s a bigger issue at play here. If you “work in IT” and are burnt out from “15 containers and a lack of a gui” I’m afraid to say you’re in the wrong field of work and you’re trying to jam a square peg in a round hole.
Honestly, this is the kind of response that actually makes me want to stop self hosting. Community members that have little empathy.
I work in IT and like most we’re also a Windows shop. I have zero professional experience with Linux but I’m learning through my home lab while simultaneously trying extract myself from the privacy cluster fuck that is the current consumer tech industry. It’s a transition and the documentation I find more or less matches the OPs experience.
I research, pick what seems to be the best for my situation (often most popular), get it working with sustainable, minimal complexity, and in short time find that some small, vital aspect of its setup (like reverse proxy) has literally zero documentation for getting it to work with some other vital part of my setup. I guess I should have made a better choice 18 months ago when I didn’t expect to find this new service accessible. I find some two year old Github issue comment that allegedly solves my exact problem that I can’t translate to the version I’m running because it’s two revisions newer. Most other responses are incomplete, RTFM, or “git gud n00b”, like your response here
Wherever you work, whatever industry, you can get burnt out. It’s got nothing to do with if you’ve “got what it takes” or whatever bullshit you think “you’re in the wrong field of work and you’re trying to jam a square peg in a round hole” equates to.
I run close to 100 services all using docker compose and it’s an incredibly simple, repeatable, self documenting process. Spinning up some new things is effortless and takes minutes to have it set up, accessible from the internet, and connected to my SSO.
If it’s that easy, then point me to where you’ve written about it. I’d love to learn what 100 services you’ve cloned the repos for, tweaked a few files in a few minutes, and run with minimal maintenance all working together harmoniously.
Also, the right to repair them.