This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Robert Scott
The hum of the diesel engine has been apart of my soundtrack for a decade. From a lumber yard to trash truck to chemicals, I’ve hauled it all. Somewhere between the long stretches of highway and the loading racks, I realized I was always chasing something else.
These days, “DevOps engineer” feels less like a job title and more like a philosophy, which fits me perfectly. I’ve spent ten years solving problems on the road, but I’ve always been drawn to building, optimizing, and figuring out how systems of all kinds work together.
Driving gives me hours to think and listen to tutorials on whatever catches my curiosity. One day, I stumbled across a video about home labs. Within minutes, I was hooked! My wife would say when i get hooked into something i go all in!
Soon I was comparing Ubuntu vs windows, bookmarking Docker guides, and sketching network configurations online while loading chemicals. I had no idea how far down this rabbit hole I’d go…or how much it would change my life. I’m sure most of you know how deep that hole can go! Within the first week after getting home i bought a USB drive and duel-booted my old gaming computer with Ubuntu 24.04. Now I’m more confident with CLI then running windows. I’m constantly trying to learn everything I can while leaving time to keep learning python.
The more I learned, the more i realized this wasn’t just a hobby. It was the same problem-solving rush I’d felt on the road, but now i was building services that could grow, scale, and maybe even become a business. I started to see how this could lead to something more and pay me back all the years I’ve built up my vast array of skills. It’s interesting to see how all of my non-tech related life experience’s have prepped me for what’s to come.
More coming as my journey continues!
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Robert Scott