@ScribblingOn I *think* what helped me (in hindsight) had to do with three things: good systems theoretical knowledge (I spent, and still do, a good portion of my spare time reading about OS internals and how things worked together (Linux, bsds, etc)), maintain a full stack myself 1/ @ScribblingOn (easier today than in late nineties and early noughties - things like my own DNS, mail servers, lamp stack etc), and probably the most important, offering myself to do all the "sysadmin" work. If where I worked there was a need for a new system, ask the admin to guide me 2/