I love this for you :)

I’m happy I could help, I hate to see current industry workers forget what it was like to wonder and be uncertain before taking the plunge. Gatekeeping is an unfortunately common part of IT.

It sounds like you have a solid start in terms of homelab work, I’d definitely talk to your local library and get some real workplace experience. Homelab experience is easy to disregard when hiring unless you can show your work too, so network diagram charts or a splashy data visualization page on a server you can access remotely will help in interviews. The library experience is actual workplace application of knowledge so that’s much harder to ignore and should be a priority.

I wish you all the best, I’m sorry your first encounter with the community was a territorial greybeard. As ever, I remain happy to help if you think of more questions.

Don’t mind my jaded fellow IT pro. The job eats at you if you’re in a bad position, which I’m guessing he/she/they/drag is.

In a small way I can see they’re trying to help (even if the delivery stinks), as IT isn’t just something you can dabble in and then pivot into it at this point in time. If you want to work in IT you really have to want it and make it a priority simply because the competition is fierce and getting started is grueling and will potentially burn less dedicated people out.

To support that point it’s worth pointing out that the entry level of the industry is both very saturated and generally very unsatisfying help desk work. Without dedicated experience in system administration and/or formal education in IT you’re most likely only going to get a help desk position, and that’s if you’re lucky.

That’s not the end of the road though, at that point you’ll need to absorb as much knowledge as you can, get some certifications to show you know what you’re doing (which certs will definitely change by the time you get there.). Once you have them you can leverage those certifications into a better position. That position might be a junior sysadmin if you’re lucky, but in my experience those positions want years of experience in sysadmin tasks.

As the saying goes: The hardest part of getting into IT is getting a helpdesk position, the second hardest part is getting the hell out of helpdesk.

That’s the general roadmap. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask away.