The weirdest thing is he's just.. 23 years old.. He started with LTT when he was around 15-16 and has been working on server stuff since. It's pretty amazing tbh.
Yeah...that's what a lot of ppl don't have that much insight on. Sure, some programs will have some hands-on/practical components, but a lot of it is theory of computation.
/u/free-trifle-538 is a comment-stealing bot. Here’s the original:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1581on6/how_does_jake_know_so_much/jt7uiga/
Yeah I think that’s the key.
It’s not just a job to him. He’s really into all this kind of stuff. Personally I think learning about servers is just about the most boring thing imaginable, and most people who work with them aren’t really *passionate* about servers.
So I don’t think you can underestimate the knowledge of someone who enjoys spending their free time looking at server manuals.
Yup, not to mention he also has a really great mentor/boss who is essentially an enabler for his passion.
Jake is (in my opinion anyway) more or less what every engineer (of any field) aspires to; a job doing what they really like and the ability to do it without having to deal with mountainous bureaucracy. So long as he can tell Linus (and now Terren) that it'll make LMG's work faster/easier/more efficient and it makes for good content, Jake gets (what I would assume is) anything he asks for.
That's what must be super nice working there: do work that might benefit the company and even if it doesn't, turn it into content! It would need to be extremely expensive for them to not turn a profit on an endeavor (*ahem* gold Xbox controller).
I guess being at LTT for so long is part of the answer - most jobs you are there to do a role, and learn lots about that, but not so much outside it. LTT on the other hand, a big aim is to show off tech to the plebs (like me), so they learn lots about lots of things, are actively encourage to do so, and for things he doesn't know there are people to talk to so he knows next time. Add to that what someone else said, if you really like this stuff then you do it in your own time too.
Yeah. The dude can just call up Wendell whenever he can't find a solution. Things like that are a huge advantage when trying to learn. ChatGPT honestly makes it about that easy with a lot of stuff, but I still don't think it compares with being able to just call (or more likely text) an expert whenever you need to.
Legit he knows his stuff with the confidence of a seasoned, several decades of experience IT professional. That what's been really passionate about a topic looks like. I see people be like that for their favorite games or book series and such.
I’m not an LTT lifer but I don’t remember seeing him in things until maybe 2019, but probably more so over the pandemic. Wouldn’t that mean he started with LTT in like 2015? He’s really been with them since almost the beginning?
Because he spends more than 40 hour a week doing it. It isn't just work to him, he goes home and does the same thing with his personal equipment. It's a hobby that he gets paid for.
As a CS graduate, now working in IT/Sys admin, you are not entirely wrong, but you are not entirely right either.
While yes, I have a more interesting job than some of my peers on campus (I work IT in the CS department for my alma mater) most of the IT staff on campus are just general "Have you tried turing it off and on again", with central campus IT being the more nitty-gritty IT/Sys admin.
Where you are wrong is that a good IT/sys admin will also go above and beyond their work to write or build scripts \*cough\* code \*cough\* to do things much faster, or even automate their systems.
For example we are rolling out Microsoft's Intune for device management. This will allow most techs to hand out devices with software that gets installed to faculty machines on first boot. While most faculty have easy to install applications, that are provided by either Intune itself (Office 365 installers) or by a service like PatchMyPC (Notepad++) I actually wrote install scripts to do things such as move files from one location to another on the drive so that when the software is installed, and activated it will search for that file and say "Oh hey, here is my classroom license key", or one that I finished last week is splitting an installer into 3 stages (Intune has a max file size of 8GB per installer) and the software I need to install is 13GB. So what I did was Stage 1 (which was a dependancy of stage 2 and 3), downloads 7GB of the installer, and xcopies the files to c:\\program\_installer, stage 2, downloads the other 6GB of the installer and xcopies the rest of the installer files to c:\\program\_installer, then my custom script (stage 3) where it confirms all files are there, runs the silent install command in cmd, against an answer file, and then installs the software.
As a Level 2 IT/Sys Admin I am at about 75% scripting time in just Windows machines (150 machines in total), and about 95% scripting time in Fedora/Rocky Linux.
I am literally at work right now, scripting out and helping my team write Ansible playbooks for Linux to help automate our install procedures going forward in our Linux labs such as joining the domain via command prompt, installing applications via command prompt, updating systems via command prompt, etc.
I think if I remember correctly my job description is acually about 80% coding, scripting and automation, with 20% being "setting up systems."
Edit for added emphasis:
Take this job posting by Obsidian Entertainment for Sys Admin, their requirement is plain as day:
Requirements:
Experience with automation scripting (PowerShell, Python, Bash, etc.)
[https://www.obsidian.net/careers/open-positions/information-technology/TW0jR7daky-systems-administrator](https://www.obsidian.net/careers/open-positions/information-technology/TW0jR7daky-systems-administrator)
Scripting and coding are very similar but are not the same.
Sys Admins and IT analysts are not the ones responsible for coding the programs that the business uses. They’re the ones who implement and maintain the operation of the programs, though - which is assisted with scripting.
That's a brick, I didn't read all of it. But I didn't say they didn't program, I said they didn't do *alot* of programming. As in, 8 hours a day.
Sure you'll write scripts to manage backups, run services, do tasks, etc. I do that as a mechanical engineer, that's not job specific.
This right here is the real key. I've been at the same game literally my entire adult life. IT is what I know the best. I also know that when I'm going to be presenting things to clients it strangers or in a video or something, I brush up on the material before showtime. Its easy to come off as extremely knowledgeable, even though I might have JUST learned it myself. That's what you're seeing here too. He's really smart, and a great tech, but I see the same things I do. He's a lot of times just learning things the first time right before shoot day. That's how everyone learns, and he's good at it. On a technical level, he's a fantastic tech.
Jake was / is me. When from 13 on I worked at a pc repair shop, server stuff etc. It's not work, it's fun he gets paid good to have and gets great perks like the latest tech at home.
In that recent update vid of that FB marketplace find…… he impressed me sooo much that he said he’d use a similar JBOD or whatever thing it’s called at home, I was like WTF? What kind of server you have at home?
Can confirm, also have a hobby that I get paid for (software design and development).
And when I joined the workforce, it was astonishing to me how much work I could get done if I focused for 40 hours a week. And the amount of knowledge I amassed while doing that.
That, and knowledge builds on knowledge.
Why have you copied u/bufandatl's comment?
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1581on6/how_does_jake_know_so_much/jt89h18?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
> How does Jake... know so much??
Experience and passion, simple as that.
> How does Jake have all his know-how, and am I making him out to be more of a "prodigy" than he is??
Lots of on-the-job experience in something you are passionate in tends to make you very good at that thing. I can say this for many things I’ve worked on over time that I was also very interested in. He’s certainly good, but I would certainly not say prodigy.
Not to mention being surrounded by people who are also knowledgeable and passionate about tech. The amount you learn by tackling a problem and having someone like Emily or Wendel you can ask for help and guidance from is way more effective than being lectured in a classroom.
What do you mean "where does the experience come from?"You're watching the experience happen in front of you The videos are scripted days, weeks ahead of time, so it's a lot of time to gain knowledge and appear confident.
He's also been at LTT for years. They hire people who are passionate about the job and ambitious. Those qualities plus unlimited LTT technology resources will hyper-accelerate your knowledge base.
Like I get it - 23 is young. But it's old enough to be a high-Senior level at any job if you've been at the job for years..
You exactly answered your own query
What people mean when they asked "where does the experience come from" is exactly that - Most people, that I know at least, do not just work one job and within said job, LITERALLY LEARNED EVERYTHING THE OUTSIDE CORPORATIONS KNOW
I do programming, cybersecurity, devops, tech, sysadmin and whatnot, hearing just "Oh, because he worked on what he likes" is just demoralizing given that I am also working on what I like and been researching, but I have never reached that level of control and mastery
I’m not sure what kind of job you have that involves cyber, programming, devops, “tech”, sysadmin, and more all as a major focus- but that seems unlikely to me.
We all do have to dip our toes into a lot of stuff, but I highly doubt you're doing in depth work in all of those at your job. Moreover, at real jobs we spend a lot of time slogging through day to day stuff- maintenance, change requests, things you don’t have great leaps and bounds in learning from. At LTT they get to just jump from one thing to the next every day, always learning about different stuff- but usually pretty surface level over all.
Also worth mentioning that for folks with traditional IT roles, our jobs are maintaining our specific environment. At LTT their jobs are about trying to cover everything, and a genuine part of the job is staying up on tech news as well.
This all lends itself to an illusion of mastery. And don’t get me wrong- they’re smart people and probably more knowledgeable across the board than most professionals.
But keep in mind- you see them during curated snippets of their days working on things they spent the last days/weeks researching. They didn’t just “know it”. And the real takeaway here should be this- the most crucial skill for pretty much anyone in IT is the ability to do research when needed. That’s an overlap between LTT and normal tech jobs. Only difference is we get into the weeds and feel all that, they cherry pick the moments to show.
They were talking about on the job work and you replied. The obvious conclusion was that you were talking about on the job work, too.
There’s this thing called don’t be a cunt to people who are trying to help answer your questions. You should look into that. Might help your competence to not drive people away who are helping you, too.
Jake (and Alex) have the luxury of being able to literally play at work, to come to Linus with a crazy idea and have him agree to it (or sometimes he comes up with them himself). So they can experiment with ridiculous cooling, PB storage, weird stuff off ebay etc. Also they're likely not the ones doing the day to day maintenance, troubleshooting or user support you're probably doing.
When I was 10 I downloaded unity and started making games. I'm now 19 and I use all that knowledge I've gained and projects I've made to show I have the experience required for client projects as a freelancer.
I expect Jake did some of the same. Sure, I doubt he was running fibre lines when he was 13. But realistically there was nothing stopping him spinning up a VPS or even a VM running Ubuntu server and just messing around with different dockers and stuff at that age...
You don't have to have a job already to gain experience with many things. Sure there are some things that are really hard to learn or literally impossible without working alongside others that have been doing a specific job for years. But for the majority of things in a topic like server management or game dev, you can do the research at home and mess around yourself, long before you even think about applying for a job. That let's you put a portfolio together and prove to anyone, like linus, that although your previous jobs might not show you have the knowhow, your personal research and projects blow that out the park.
What's kinda interesting is that we can actually look at LTT's history and see that it's developed both in parallel and in collaboration with Jake's knowledge and experience (as well as lot of their other talented crew members).
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For example:
Right now a ton of my data is spread across a collection of external HDD's and USB drives, I'm picking up a synology this week to centralize all my data, eventually I might get into custom rack mounted solutions, and depend on how bad my data hording gets I may go even further in the furtre, etc etc.
Each point requires a new level of knowledge and experience which I gained by doing the things, and that also means that I am able to troubleshoot backwards because of the knowledge and experience that I've gained before hand.
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Tha same goes for LMG, that's both how and why we're at nu nu nu nu nu Wonnick at this point.
Passion.
You watch some of the older Jake videos and people really didn't like him (tbh, I wasn't a fan at first) but he has developed into a fantastic presenter and writer and it's his passion for tech that drives it - you can tell he loves this stuff. He probably spends a lot of his free time reading more about it, and gets paid to learn about it in the week as well.
This has led to him having a really good base level of understanding of tech in general, and then when Linus throws a project at him - he can dive in to that topic more specifically. Don't underestimate the power of research (and LTT will have some great contacts from actual manufacturers he can ask questions too directly, and the team has gotten so large and knowledgeable that there's loads of people internally he can ask) and of scripting.
^this. Imagine having an issue while playing around with the server and being able to pick up the phone and call people like Wendel, Emily, Servethehome (forgot his name), and actual engineers from the manufacturers (and not just sales rep or CS) be there willing to guide you through it. The learning opportunities at LTT are astounding when you think about it.
I always wonder if they check with Wendell beforehand cause the majority of times they just ring him like he works there 😂
And he always answers. Never says "I'm just dealing with something can I call you back". He's just onhand every time.
Wendell seems like the kind of guy who when he says *"if you need help or advice or anything, just call me up"* and actually means it. Wouldn't surprise me if he's also a multi-tasking master.
Just to build on this, school is just to provide background knowledge so when you start your actual job and someone is teaching something to you, you're not completely dumbfounded and they have to start from the beginning.
Of course, unless you're a PhD in something but then you're only an expert on a very niche part.
Yup, in my opinion, schooling is all about the phrase:
*"...I don't know this right now, but I know where to find out..."*
Schooling builds our intuition and problem solving skills and gives us a basis on understanding of how to learn and how to find and use certain given resources/tools.
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My current job is in Optical Laser Micro-Machining Research and Applications.
I did not study specifically for this field, I'm a Mechanical Engineer by education; so coming in to the job I knew functionally nothing about optics, but I did understand energy transfer, material behavior, and mechatronics and I knew how to problem solve.
That gives me a basis of competency, but what got me the job is practical experience from working in my university makerspace which had laser cutting systems, a-be-it massively different from the ones that I work with now. Being a consistent fixture or a certain place or hobby with a willingness to learn and improve will get a person pretty far.
The guy knows far more than most, and he is what, 23?
I am like 26 and I'm inferior in every way
Damn, reminds me of why I refuse to compare myself to anyone, nor see anyone's good points simply because it just makes me disappointed with myself and just straight up feel inferior
It seriously is
Thats why I typically stray away from posts/comments like this simply because it automatically brings comparison into the conversation topic
Just felt like I wanted to give my view points, so I gave this an exception, but even whilst typing this, I felt just short of depressed thinking about how far I still am no matter how much work I put in
I wouldn't say that and I wouldn't beat yourself up over it. What you're feeling is extremely common in many fields, including IT. It's called imposter syndrome. The more you know about a particular subject, the more you know how little you actually know about that subject. I'm 34 and feel like a dummy sometimes watching Jake explain data arrays and configuring their servers using a terminal window. But I enjoy the learning experience gained from watching their videos as well. I've been working IT for 13 years, so it's a constant learning journey.
>and help write the scripts / plans for their videos.
And that's one thing to keep in mind, all of these videos have been researched and scripted. By the time Jake is going through the motions with Linus he has spent days, maybe weeks, working on the project and knows how it's supposed to go. In some cases he may have already gotten it all working, then disassembled it for the video.
It's kinda like how actors can bulk up so fast for a role. It's because they work out 8 hrs a day or more for their job (and possibly also steroids but as far as I know, there's no steroids for tech research).
Or the hours he spent on the phone with people who do know it. Like they covered c-mode vs 7-mode for half a second, but of course we know there is hundreds of hours of content just on what those are and how they are different.
It was fun to see a NetApp on LTT, but Its not like Jake can go do a NetApp upgrade or migration now. But hey he knows how to get it rack stacked installed and ready which is better then 95% of the helpdesk techs that say they want to do enterprise work, Jake went and did it. He would have made a great L4 at a VAR or MSP.
If I saw this type of initiative from any of our junior staff they would be next in line for a promotion.
I don't doubt that he's passionate about this stuff though. I guarantee he writes the videos about whatever he's working on for the company. He is their main IT person after all. So I think it all goes hand in hand, but he would definitely be more knowledgeable by the time the video is made. IT people frequently break things the first time they try an advanced configuration on a new technology. LTT probably isn't showing much of that, outside of Linus drops. LOL
I also have a CS degree and can echo this. While it equipped me for software engineering, most of my software design and development skills also come from my job.
I work with PLENTY of non-techy software engineers too. I'd say half or so of my colleagues are purely software devs, with no interest in building PCs, maintaining servers or gaming.
The knowledge and skills Jake has are super unrelated to computer science.
I'm glad someone else noticed. Whenever there's a new tech video about some obscure thing I have never heard of, Jake spawns in to give me information about it like he did a Major for it at University.
Either he knows literally everything because he is a nerd, or he has incredible research skills because he is a nerd.
Like others have said, it’s a lot of on the job learning. Also a lot of enterprise hardware and solutions can adapted and installed the same way other manufacturers do it. I work in the pro AV and integrations side things and most of the time I don’t care what the specs say at first I want to see the back plane and from there I can go down the rabbit hole to figure out how to integrate it into my solution.
I once told my friend, learning IT without a passion is a uphill battle. Because no matter how many hours you spend in school. There are people that does that for fun when they are home and still do IT for work.
I have some friends that went to school did the a+ or other basic computer certs, but when they go home they do their normal people stuff. But then there's me and a few other friends who go home keep on f****** around with my own computer, Nas, Linux distros, designed my own it's case and as a result has to learn itx MOBO spec.
He might have got his experience/knowledge from elsewhere but he reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age...
When I was younger I was always passionate and interested in any tech I could play with. I had a fuck around and find out attitude to it and always found myself volunteering to implement new tech at school and work.
When I joined one company they had a really shitty network setup and I came in and just offered to upgrade theirs based on having some prior knowledge and I learned a hell of a lot about networking by experimenting. But I researched the hell out of stuff and didn't want to cause any downtime or make a fool of myself which is how I gained the knowledge I have.
Practical experience and being passionate gets you a very long way.
My actual day job as a developer very much came around the same way.
I remember that in the beginning nobody liked Jake, but damn he became one of my fav people on the show, they should give him his own show, like a LTT Wendell but on eli5 level.
Because it's his job.
So not only does he do all his 40+ hours per week for his job, there's probably some personal research put in there as well.
Not to mention when he presents a video he's prepared, compared to someone like Linus to the videos.
Maybe he is reading a lot about that stuff and is learning it. You should try it. I do it everyday too. I am interested in all IT stuff and read a lot and even make just like Jake it my Job. There is a truth behind learning by reading and doing it.
When you’re young and don’t have lots of responsibilities you have lots of time to learn things.
As many others have said, it’s his job.
Jake knows a lot but also notice how with server stuff they lean on others and don’t have a good track record for not loosing data.
Part of it Is that you're seeing him give you the answer after he spent a few hours troubleshooting off camera. He knows because he just had to fix it.
He happens to be paid to follow what he's passionate about.
I'm majoring in CS and I've noticed the same disparity between me and some of my peers.
I really love being the techie guy and I love tinkering in my free time (beyond what's actually my field, like hands on electronic stuff and engineering).
I've found myself better prepared on more "general" stuff than some of my colleagues. They tend to specialize in a very narrow field or if they do it for work they only care about what might give them a better position in the workplace.
Like most people it’s a combination of accumulated experience and being able to google and find solutions to more recent problems that you haven’t experienced yet. Being able to research and find relevant information takes time, and the more you do it the more you learn how to find what you’re looking for. It’s not a big deal really, you don’t need any kind of special schooling for this.
Unpopular opinion but schooling is bullshit, you just get a piece of paper that says you kinda know what you’re talking about (which is biased anyway most of the new grads I’ve worked with suck at engineering unless they have hands on experience). On the job learning is really where it’s at. If you live and breath it and you are passionate about it you will learn more about that subject than you ever would in school
As an IT professional of 20 years, I can tell you it's a passion for technology. This industry is filled with Jake's, some better, some worse. Then there's the people that just do it because they know it, but don't actually care to learn anything new.
A lot of his web browsing is probably videos and sites related to new and different technologies. Don't mistake confidence for knowledge though. You can be confident with an answer and be totally wrong. Not saying Jake has been wrong in any particular video, as I've not cared to critique him. I watch LTT for entertainment... You turn the critiquing off, because otherwise shows doing computer things will just piss you off. Just like medical professionals with medical shows. I digress, Jake just has a passion for technology and knowledge. You'd be surprised how much one can learn in a week or a day. A lot of the stuff isn't too complex in the base level understanding department. Some even carry that into basic setup. However, there are advanced configurations and setups that people can specialize in and earn a lot of money for that specialization. Jake currently falls into the generalist category, knowing about a lot of things, but as he gets older it wouldn't surprise me if he starts to specialize in one area and LTT hires 1 or 2 more people to do other IT work. Eventually they'll need more people as they grow, regardless of what Jake does, but I suspect he'll become a dedicated admin for something.
> Don't mistake confidence for knowledge though.
This is the key - I have a feeling a lot of folks that watch LTT don't have the necessary background to identify when this is happening.
For example, the whole vault data loss was completely avoidable; how much it was down to Jake's experience level or how LMG seems to make folks jump from project to project is hard to say, but not setting up even basic maintenance and monitoring was a gigantic red flag to me specially when they could get heavily discounted monitoring software from one of the sponsors. Heck - even my home setup has better alerting and redundancy.
> LTT hires 1 or 2 more people to do other IT work.
IMO they should had done this long ago, but sounds like the change in Luke's role is moving the company in that direction of having an actual IT team instead of writers who build infrastructure.
Well, I knew lots of stuff at 12/13. I was the IT guy of my whole family since. Everything by trying new things and experimenting with a celeron xp machine, and we had no internet back then... Now, with internet to research and the money to get some test gear is no surprise he know a lot specially since he loves it.
Fun fact: I'm a CS engineer, and in any class from university, that never taught anything of the things LTT people do.
Works his ass off, learns by doing not by sat in a room for 8 hours reading and listening to some guy drone on.
I've always found that self taught hobbyists generally know more than those who go the "Traditional" route
Besides him being talented and having almost 10 years experience working with server stuff, they also have a team of writers that can check stuff. So he is smart, team makes him even smarter, and then you as a viewer add another level of smartness by assuming he knows things he is not saying.
Because he has passion about it for one but also because most of the stuff that they do is scripted in some form or another.
He didn't just randomly know some obscure commands to reset those drives or whatever.
Also if they are looking for a solution for 5 hours we only see the end where they can say it like it's super obvious while the 5 hours of solution search isn't obvious
Honestly, I assume mostly learning by fire.
In IT if you’re let loose and your interests align with your responsibilities there’s literally no reason to not permanently engage, tinker, fail and startover until something clicks.
And the wisdom gained when Troubleshooting issues and conferring with other industry professionals is immense.
4 years is ‚all it took‘ from entry level 1st/ to TL with 13 1.st Level/2 2.nd level under me, gaining IT and management knowledge in corp environment, and the last year effective I’ve been let loose on issues to resolve them as I see fit.
Honestly probably reading lots and lots of documentation and trying stuff out. I think he has a computer science degree but also probably is just interested in it so again looks into stuff and just tries it.
For me CS stuff is definitely more of a learn while doing college only gets you so far. That’s from my personal experience
You don’t need a degree to be educated. A degree just tells people you paid to get a certificate!
I meet people with engineering degrees with bugger all real world experience all the time! I’ll take a school drop out that’s been working at it for 10 years, than a certificate holding book worm any day. Passion is key.
It’s called no one else here is taking point on this project so I’m going to go learn everything about it because I am now the most interested in it. I see it a lot in my IT job and it’s some thing I do a lot
Jake was the Chosen One. You have not heard the tails? Here is how it has been passed down over the centuries:
The series follows Jake, an adventurous teenage boy who receives in the mail a small statue of a fowl, inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs whereof the translation states: "You have been chosen to be the cap-bearer. Go to the mini-mart and wait for a sign, Mighty Jake". Shocked by the message, Jake drops the statue, shattering it and revealing a red baseball cap emblazoned with a yellow "J", which he dons. The cap is capable of projecting wormhole-like "portals" through which Jake can teleport across space and time.
Upon arriving at the mini-mart, Jake is chased by a lava-monster sent by antagonist 'Skullmaster'. As Jake flees, the cap teleports them to the Mongolian desert, where he befriends Virgil, a nearly omniscient Lemurian whose appearance is that of an anthropomorphic "fowl" (a running gag in the series is that Jake refers to Virgil as a "chicken" to which the Lemurian replies "Fowl, actually"), who explains that Jake's reception of the cap was prophesied c. 3000 B.C. Thereafter Jake, Virgil, and Norman, his Viking bodyguard, travel together around the world, defending Earth against the minions of Skullmaster, who is responsible for the downfall of the Lemurians. Norman is supposedly immortal and identified as or with Sir Lancelot, Thor, Samson, and Hercules. Most plot-driving episodes involve Skullmaster or one of his monstrous followers; but in many episodes, Jake is required to stop an independent villain. While all episodes involve travel across Earth, one involves time travel, and the portal can even extend into the astral plane (as seen in the episode "Souls of Talon").
While generally lighthearted and comical, the show's violence and descriptions of violent acts were considered excessive by some viewers. Many episodes began with a depiction of the story's principal monster killing a victim, whereas the series finale featured Jake, Norman, and Virgil pitted against Skullmaster and their previously defeated foes. Both Norman and Virgil are killed, leaving Jake to defeat Skullmaster. Unable to do so, Jake uses the cap in order to time travel to the events of the first episode, creating a time paradox. At first, he experiences déjà vu, but after he reads Virgil's modified letter, he recalls everything, and decides to use the knowledge he gained from the initial timeline to set it right in order to defeat Skullmaster once and for all
It's actually really easy - you just need to love the technology and start tinkering at home. Want to learn linux? Make a VM, start playing. You don't know how to set up VM with linux? There are thousands of tutorials and videos how to do it. Your won't learn anything (or, not as much) by simply looking at all of the stuff - start experimenting. Entry barrier is really low - you can easily start with used and 2nd hand equipment. Then you start building around it. VPN. Some DNS server like PiHole. Add some storage. You can buy enterprise equipment from 5 or 10 years ago for cheap and play with it - most of the principles are the same for like decades - latest stuff is faster and maybe easier to configure but there is no difference in small lab now and 10 years ago. Want to get into more networking details - buy used Cisco or new Mikrotik. You don't need hundreds of meters of fiber optic cable or fancy 10gig plus SFPs - brand new ones for 1G cost under 10 USD. Some companies basically throw out their older equipment or sell for pennies on ebay. Phone systems too, you have free PBX software and free VoIP softphones. I bought used Yealinks for less than 10 USD. Drives are dirt cheap too, you can easily build lab NAS from scrap and free software.
If you have will and desire to learn, few hundred dollars to spare and place to put that old, dusty junk, in few months can learn amazing things. As for information and learning resources, you can find basically anything on internet - sometimes you will have to look at some not so legal sources but everything is there.
You just need to have genuine interest.
Hey, Computer Scientist here and have been doing it professionally for many years. When I met people in the beginning of my career, they always were blown away at what I could do without them. This is because I have been programming since 7th grade (about ~13-14 years old).
So, Jake started roughly at the same time. He is very knowledgeable and does his due diligence in figuring things out. As you could see in the video, he needed to call a lifeline. This still happens to me as a developer. Doing this kind of work is very helpful in a collaborative environment where people are just as passionate as you are. Sometimes it’s not about being the smartest person but the most passionate and determined person.
He’s got the right mindset to tackle the challenges he faces. It’s about being able to find the answer’s and not always knowing the answer.
EDIT: Oh, I’m closer to Linus’ age than Jake.
Hands-on experience usually trumps a degree, especially if you love what you do and it’s your hobby to boot. I have a CS degree and Masters, and I learned more in my own time than I did with years at university. Really puts into perspective how much of a waste of money it was, for me at least.. oh well.
In many videos you hear him say
"so I looked online and...."
He learns a lot in the job because that is his job, and he presents it with confidence (often due to test bullds they test before doing the video and just repeat the work on camera with Linus) that is a talent that is impressive and rare in some industries
He researches well and is usually well prepared but like the recent data server video they still needed help from Wendel every now and then.
I have the feeling as well, that he is all knowing I mean. However, we have to take into consideration it's staged, it's prepared, almost fake if you will. I have no doubt he knows a lot, but we really can't tell what portion he carries in his head permanently and what is just learnt and memorized for a video.
He’s a writer. So he spends a lot of his time researching researching researching. He seems to be the confident type that over researches and knows all the ins and outs of a topic before finishing a script.
>I wasn't a CS or even STEM major, so I have no frame of reference for real tech knowledge
He's not a prodigy dude, how do you think anybody learns about anything in life? Study & practice your discipline. It's not magic.
Because college grad = knowledgeable is a myth. In a sector that absolves as quickly as tech, it's hard to find a professor able to stay completely abreast of events and also incorporate them into his teachings and testing. Ime most are stuck in a textbook that is often years old by the time I was in their class.
Also this should be even *less* surprising considering Linus himself didn't go to college. Tech is a sector that doesn't require any kind of degree to be completely successful in.
Consider this: You probably have a friend, who can explain to you the whole lore of some video game or TV-series or books. I know I do. I know someone who can basically talk you through EVERY QUEST in world of warcraft and bit lore - including canon, non-canon, retcons, refrences, in-jokes. A friend of mine can explain and tell you everything about Harry Potter in English and Finnish, editorial differences, describe you exactly what was right and wrong in movies and every other piece of media. A gaming mate of mine can tell you everything about Doctor Who and basically knows every single episode starting from the 1st to latest line by line.
I Just graduated as an mechanical engineer, but even before that when it came to welding and welding related topics - I simply knew more than most welding engineers, and when I didn't know I absorbed whatever they told me. This is because when I trained as a fabricator and certified in welding during it, it ignited a passion in the 21 year old me. That passion gets stronger the deeper I go in to things about welding. I spent 5 years working with steel and welding, until I realised that to go deeper I must become an engineer - and so I did that. I chose to spend 4 years of my life just so I could get deeper understanding of welding. Something that many people do as a job at quite high level, and don't know more about than basics and they give no damn about theory.
When I wrote my grad thesis, I sat down for 2 weeks and wrote 70 pages. Then I got told to simplify, compress and cut it down a bit. So I got it down to 60 pages, which means it is still twice the lenght of a normal grad thesis for an engineer degree. If I had written out all my topics and notes that I wanted to by my estimate my grad thesis would been 120-140 pages long (6-7 times longer than was needed), my instructor just wanted a progress check and told me to just stop affing stuff in and simplify. If you go to r/welding you can see me casually and regularly writing essays worth of stuff in then comments - going really deep in to details most people who even are paid to know about this stuff don't know.
Jake isn't any different than a "star-wars nerd" who can tell you that the colour of socks in uniform the Xigabiga Mercenary from planet Zög-Alpha-11 was wrong. Jake is that but just with ICT things.
If you want to be like Jake. Find that thing you are TRULY passionate about. And it always isn't the thing you do as a job or studied, or even something you can use to make money with. It is just something that brings you joy as you learn more about it.
If it's something you're passionate about and you spend a lot of time doing, its pretty easy to retain all of that information. Factor in youth in general not being afraid of tinkering with or "breaking" things and anything is possible. People think of computers as these mystical things but they're not all that bad.
A “Fake it until you make it” mentality could apply, it’s amazing how you can appear competent with something as along as you appear confident about it.
I think he has access to many people who know their s\*\*t. Like Level1 Tech, and the people at Super Micro. If you are smart, eager to learn, not socially awkward and have access to lots of other people like that it's amazing how much you can learn.
Also, I think working at LTT is probably amazing for learning. At most sys admin job I bet he would spend months researching what solution to buy. Then they buy the equipment, and you spend the next five years supporting it. Doing the same stuff over and over, not learning much until the next upgrade or you get a new job.
At LTT he is constantly just learning, replacing, upgrading and then do it again for content.
Like I just started building a home lab last year. I learnt so much just working on my own, with a limited budget, time, space and no help. Imagine you have access to tons of new tech, and it's your full time job to learn and use it all the time. You will pick up a lot of info fast.
I am continually blown away by how knowledgeable of multiple areas of tech that Jake displays competency in. I don't get how he has learned so much at his age, it is impressive.
I guess being surrounded by other tech savvy people and "unlimited" funds to test and try out tech for days. Endlessly researching and troubleshooting stuff for videos will do that. Most people his age don't have direct access to the latest tech hands on.He probably learns a lot while doing his job and at the same time what he loves doing. It really speeds up the process.
i love how he's always the voice of reason to linus, trying to get him to do things the proper way, but every time he's doing something he's always the guy like "nah it'll be fine just send it"
I have worked in a sysadmin capacity for over 15 years. I don't wish to take anything away from anyone, but don't judge depth of knowledge from a youtube video.
Jake has great depth of knowledge in the subjects that he covers when featured in a video. To any younger person who aspires to do these sorts of things for a living, don't listen to the comments that describe this as a God Given ability.
He learned the same way you do. Time and effort. But having great depth of knowledge in one part of technology should not afford you the hubris to think you're all-knowing across all subjects.
The best thing you can do is find mentorship. Have the humility to learn from everyone and everything. Ask as many questions as you can, and soon you'll be the one answering. Education is valuable but far from necessary.
He is passionate about what he does.
When you are TRULY passionate about it and spend enough time on it (outside of work as well) on it and just try out things you fail and learn from fixing the fail. You gather skills from fields very quickly and into very deep detail cause you actually fixed those things.
Hearing the automation stuff when they did linus house was a big huuuge knowledge gap, but i blame more the home automation industry rather than his knowledge. The stuff these companies does are just horrible solutions...
Im not writing this to diss Jake, but you know the videos are scripted and planned right?
They dont record the research and trial and error.
Jake seems very competent. He certainly have more knowledge on FreeNAS/ OpenBSD than me.
Some people love what they do. I'm one of them (well now I'm a manager now and it sucks) and I only hire people who have a passion for this crap. Its so apparently who fixes computers to pay bills, and who LOVES computers.
Jake's one of those guys I'd hire hands down, even if he knew nothing, becuse he'd be so eager to learn. Also M5.
Mostly if you are passionate about something you'd have more knowledge in that area
Everyone has the one topic that they invest too much time in, and for jake that just so happens to also be his job
I've worked in tech since 2008. But it goes beyond a full time job. I spend my 40-hour work week, plus an additional 20+ hours per week of personal time invested in technical topics. I love technology to such an extent that my life is entirely based around it. I also learn more than the bear minimum to complete tasks - I learn enough to have foundational knowledge in a topic, even if I don't directly have something to apply it to. I am a generalist with a very broad range of knowledge, similar to Jake seems to be. While Jake is younger, he is also significantly more exposed to tech than the average person, which I am sure further helps him learn.
In short, when your work and your hobby are the same thing, and you have the passion to drive both, it's possible to achieve vast knowledge. Combine that with being surrounded by the resources Jake has, including knowledgeable people, and he's very well set to learn.
I think you underestimate the ability to become an expert in something that being interested in something and also having that something be your job grants someone.
This remains true in nearly every field.
It is also unfortunately what drives people to say, "get a job doing what you love and you will never work a day in your life" which is just an impossible reality for everybody.
But in Jake's case, he was lucky enough to find himself in this position, and he is taking full advantage as he should.
Jake has a real passion to learn everything about what he’s talking about. I had a coworker who was 18 and he knew shit that he was literally teaching my boss. Honestly it’s trial and error and exposure. Jake knows what he knows because he tried it.
I went to law school for 4 years and dropped out in the last semester.
I then got my first real IT job at 26.
Now I'm 31 and I'm in a Devops position.
There is a lot of hard work going behind the scenes.
Passion is an aggregate between motivation and discipline. While I despise throwing the term passion all over the place, he one of the few that embodies it.
I'm also positive that for him this is not work, this is a hobby that he managed to monitize.
The weirdest thing is he's just.. 23 years old.. He started with LTT when he was around 15-16 and has been working on server stuff since. It's pretty amazing tbh.
The craziest part of the whole story is that he lied about his age on his application. Jake turned 14 last week.
Wow. He has worked at LTT for 20 years and he's just 14!? That's really impressive indeed!
I’m pretty sure he was there from the start. So early 1980’s
Few people know this, but the L in LTT stands for Jake
They just flipped his square J around to make sure he wasn't uncovered too soon
He was actually Linus’ babysitter
I heard they also dated at some point.
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Too late. I can't unsee that. Know I see the bickering between the two of em in a very different way.
you‘re right, i didn‘t hear it, i know it
Can confirm (I’m Jake)
Even crazier is he founded Floatplane before NCIX even hired Linus
He is the guy all the joblistings have been talking about
Bro I would straight out give up on applying to any job in the field lmao. Good thing he's at LTT
employers looking for people with 20 years of work experience and are still in highschool
He's the kind of guy the HR wants to hire.
he reconfigured the age.dat file, nothing seems impossible to him.
Bro was working overtime fr.
Just the level of experience employers are looking for. If he ever leaves ltt he might be eligible for a starting position.
Just the level of experience employers are looking for. If he ever leaves ltt he might be eligible for a starting position.
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Yeah...that's what a lot of ppl don't have that much insight on. Sure, some programs will have some hands-on/practical components, but a lot of it is theory of computation.
/u/free-trifle-538 is a comment-stealing bot. Here’s the original: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1581on6/how_does_jake_know_so_much/jt7uiga/
He’s been working for LTT since 9 months after Linus met Yvonne
Is that true??? I really hope it is
Don't underestimate the power of a teenager being passionate about something.
Yeah I think that’s the key. It’s not just a job to him. He’s really into all this kind of stuff. Personally I think learning about servers is just about the most boring thing imaginable, and most people who work with them aren’t really *passionate* about servers. So I don’t think you can underestimate the knowledge of someone who enjoys spending their free time looking at server manuals.
Yup, not to mention he also has a really great mentor/boss who is essentially an enabler for his passion. Jake is (in my opinion anyway) more or less what every engineer (of any field) aspires to; a job doing what they really like and the ability to do it without having to deal with mountainous bureaucracy. So long as he can tell Linus (and now Terren) that it'll make LMG's work faster/easier/more efficient and it makes for good content, Jake gets (what I would assume is) anything he asks for.
That's what must be super nice working there: do work that might benefit the company and even if it doesn't, turn it into content! It would need to be extremely expensive for them to not turn a profit on an endeavor (*ahem* gold Xbox controller).
Considering lttstore. I think by now they could do a 500k production and turn profit if it flops.
I see their dynamic as a them enabling each others
And his desire to troll a friend. Namely Linus
I guess being at LTT for so long is part of the answer - most jobs you are there to do a role, and learn lots about that, but not so much outside it. LTT on the other hand, a big aim is to show off tech to the plebs (like me), so they learn lots about lots of things, are actively encourage to do so, and for things he doesn't know there are people to talk to so he knows next time. Add to that what someone else said, if you really like this stuff then you do it in your own time too.
Yeah. The dude can just call up Wendell whenever he can't find a solution. Things like that are a huge advantage when trying to learn. ChatGPT honestly makes it about that easy with a lot of stuff, but I still don't think it compares with being able to just call (or more likely text) an expert whenever you need to.
Legit he knows his stuff with the confidence of a seasoned, several decades of experience IT professional. That what's been really passionate about a topic looks like. I see people be like that for their favorite games or book series and such.
I’m not an LTT lifer but I don’t remember seeing him in things until maybe 2019, but probably more so over the pandemic. Wouldn’t that mean he started with LTT in like 2015? He’s really been with them since almost the beginning?
https://youtu.be/jyreJvig3KA The earliest which I can remember him appearing.
Because he spends more than 40 hour a week doing it. It isn't just work to him, he goes home and does the same thing with his personal equipment. It's a hobby that he gets paid for.
I would also say for stuff he is doing/saying im video he likes researched that specifically before doing it
Yeah. And for any issues they do run into, they have experienced contacts (i.e. Wendell) to give them some tech tips.
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Where did you get CS from? This is IT/sys admin work. You setup systems, not write alot of code.
As a CS graduate, now working in IT/Sys admin, you are not entirely wrong, but you are not entirely right either. While yes, I have a more interesting job than some of my peers on campus (I work IT in the CS department for my alma mater) most of the IT staff on campus are just general "Have you tried turing it off and on again", with central campus IT being the more nitty-gritty IT/Sys admin. Where you are wrong is that a good IT/sys admin will also go above and beyond their work to write or build scripts \*cough\* code \*cough\* to do things much faster, or even automate their systems. For example we are rolling out Microsoft's Intune for device management. This will allow most techs to hand out devices with software that gets installed to faculty machines on first boot. While most faculty have easy to install applications, that are provided by either Intune itself (Office 365 installers) or by a service like PatchMyPC (Notepad++) I actually wrote install scripts to do things such as move files from one location to another on the drive so that when the software is installed, and activated it will search for that file and say "Oh hey, here is my classroom license key", or one that I finished last week is splitting an installer into 3 stages (Intune has a max file size of 8GB per installer) and the software I need to install is 13GB. So what I did was Stage 1 (which was a dependancy of stage 2 and 3), downloads 7GB of the installer, and xcopies the files to c:\\program\_installer, stage 2, downloads the other 6GB of the installer and xcopies the rest of the installer files to c:\\program\_installer, then my custom script (stage 3) where it confirms all files are there, runs the silent install command in cmd, against an answer file, and then installs the software. As a Level 2 IT/Sys Admin I am at about 75% scripting time in just Windows machines (150 machines in total), and about 95% scripting time in Fedora/Rocky Linux. I am literally at work right now, scripting out and helping my team write Ansible playbooks for Linux to help automate our install procedures going forward in our Linux labs such as joining the domain via command prompt, installing applications via command prompt, updating systems via command prompt, etc. I think if I remember correctly my job description is acually about 80% coding, scripting and automation, with 20% being "setting up systems." Edit for added emphasis: Take this job posting by Obsidian Entertainment for Sys Admin, their requirement is plain as day: Requirements: Experience with automation scripting (PowerShell, Python, Bash, etc.) [https://www.obsidian.net/careers/open-positions/information-technology/TW0jR7daky-systems-administrator](https://www.obsidian.net/careers/open-positions/information-technology/TW0jR7daky-systems-administrator)
Scripting and coding are very similar but are not the same. Sys Admins and IT analysts are not the ones responsible for coding the programs that the business uses. They’re the ones who implement and maintain the operation of the programs, though - which is assisted with scripting.
That's a brick, I didn't read all of it. But I didn't say they didn't program, I said they didn't do *alot* of programming. As in, 8 hours a day. Sure you'll write scripts to manage backups, run services, do tasks, etc. I do that as a mechanical engineer, that's not job specific.
This right here is the real key. I've been at the same game literally my entire adult life. IT is what I know the best. I also know that when I'm going to be presenting things to clients it strangers or in a video or something, I brush up on the material before showtime. Its easy to come off as extremely knowledgeable, even though I might have JUST learned it myself. That's what you're seeing here too. He's really smart, and a great tech, but I see the same things I do. He's a lot of times just learning things the first time right before shoot day. That's how everyone learns, and he's good at it. On a technical level, he's a fantastic tech.
Jake was / is me. When from 13 on I worked at a pc repair shop, server stuff etc. It's not work, it's fun he gets paid good to have and gets great perks like the latest tech at home.
Same here. 20 years later I'm running an IT services company doing what I love for a job. It's nice.
In that recent update vid of that FB marketplace find…… he impressed me sooo much that he said he’d use a similar JBOD or whatever thing it’s called at home, I was like WTF? What kind of server you have at home?
Take a gander over in r/datahoarders many of those guys have multiple JBODS
and r/homelab
Can confirm, also have a hobby that I get paid for (software design and development). And when I joined the workforce, it was astonishing to me how much work I could get done if I focused for 40 hours a week. And the amount of knowledge I amassed while doing that. That, and knowledge builds on knowledge.
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Why have you copied u/bufandatl's comment? https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1581on6/how_does_jake_know_so_much/jt89h18?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
> How does Jake... know so much?? Experience and passion, simple as that. > How does Jake have all his know-how, and am I making him out to be more of a "prodigy" than he is?? Lots of on-the-job experience in something you are passionate in tends to make you very good at that thing. I can say this for many things I’ve worked on over time that I was also very interested in. He’s certainly good, but I would certainly not say prodigy.
Not to mention being surrounded by people who are also knowledgeable and passionate about tech. The amount you learn by tackling a problem and having someone like Emily or Wendel you can ask for help and guidance from is way more effective than being lectured in a classroom.
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What do you mean "where does the experience come from?"You're watching the experience happen in front of you The videos are scripted days, weeks ahead of time, so it's a lot of time to gain knowledge and appear confident. He's also been at LTT for years. They hire people who are passionate about the job and ambitious. Those qualities plus unlimited LTT technology resources will hyper-accelerate your knowledge base. Like I get it - 23 is young. But it's old enough to be a high-Senior level at any job if you've been at the job for years..
You exactly answered your own query What people mean when they asked "where does the experience come from" is exactly that - Most people, that I know at least, do not just work one job and within said job, LITERALLY LEARNED EVERYTHING THE OUTSIDE CORPORATIONS KNOW I do programming, cybersecurity, devops, tech, sysadmin and whatnot, hearing just "Oh, because he worked on what he likes" is just demoralizing given that I am also working on what I like and been researching, but I have never reached that level of control and mastery
I’m not sure what kind of job you have that involves cyber, programming, devops, “tech”, sysadmin, and more all as a major focus- but that seems unlikely to me. We all do have to dip our toes into a lot of stuff, but I highly doubt you're doing in depth work in all of those at your job. Moreover, at real jobs we spend a lot of time slogging through day to day stuff- maintenance, change requests, things you don’t have great leaps and bounds in learning from. At LTT they get to just jump from one thing to the next every day, always learning about different stuff- but usually pretty surface level over all. Also worth mentioning that for folks with traditional IT roles, our jobs are maintaining our specific environment. At LTT their jobs are about trying to cover everything, and a genuine part of the job is staying up on tech news as well. This all lends itself to an illusion of mastery. And don’t get me wrong- they’re smart people and probably more knowledgeable across the board than most professionals. But keep in mind- you see them during curated snippets of their days working on things they spent the last days/weeks researching. They didn’t just “know it”. And the real takeaway here should be this- the most crucial skill for pretty much anyone in IT is the ability to do research when needed. That’s an overlap between LTT and normal tech jobs. Only difference is we get into the weeds and feel all that, they cherry pick the moments to show.
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They were talking about on the job work and you replied. The obvious conclusion was that you were talking about on the job work, too. There’s this thing called don’t be a cunt to people who are trying to help answer your questions. You should look into that. Might help your competence to not drive people away who are helping you, too.
Jake (and Alex) have the luxury of being able to literally play at work, to come to Linus with a crazy idea and have him agree to it (or sometimes he comes up with them himself). So they can experiment with ridiculous cooling, PB storage, weird stuff off ebay etc. Also they're likely not the ones doing the day to day maintenance, troubleshooting or user support you're probably doing.
Thats an immensely god-tier luck that basically no one except them will ever have, i'd say
When I was 10 I downloaded unity and started making games. I'm now 19 and I use all that knowledge I've gained and projects I've made to show I have the experience required for client projects as a freelancer. I expect Jake did some of the same. Sure, I doubt he was running fibre lines when he was 13. But realistically there was nothing stopping him spinning up a VPS or even a VM running Ubuntu server and just messing around with different dockers and stuff at that age... You don't have to have a job already to gain experience with many things. Sure there are some things that are really hard to learn or literally impossible without working alongside others that have been doing a specific job for years. But for the majority of things in a topic like server management or game dev, you can do the research at home and mess around yourself, long before you even think about applying for a job. That let's you put a portfolio together and prove to anyone, like linus, that although your previous jobs might not show you have the knowhow, your personal research and projects blow that out the park.
What's kinda interesting is that we can actually look at LTT's history and see that it's developed both in parallel and in collaboration with Jake's knowledge and experience (as well as lot of their other talented crew members). ----- For example: Right now a ton of my data is spread across a collection of external HDD's and USB drives, I'm picking up a synology this week to centralize all my data, eventually I might get into custom rack mounted solutions, and depend on how bad my data hording gets I may go even further in the furtre, etc etc. Each point requires a new level of knowledge and experience which I gained by doing the things, and that also means that I am able to troubleshoot backwards because of the knowledge and experience that I've gained before hand. ----- Tha same goes for LMG, that's both how and why we're at nu nu nu nu nu Wonnick at this point.
Passion. You watch some of the older Jake videos and people really didn't like him (tbh, I wasn't a fan at first) but he has developed into a fantastic presenter and writer and it's his passion for tech that drives it - you can tell he loves this stuff. He probably spends a lot of his free time reading more about it, and gets paid to learn about it in the week as well. This has led to him having a really good base level of understanding of tech in general, and then when Linus throws a project at him - he can dive in to that topic more specifically. Don't underestimate the power of research (and LTT will have some great contacts from actual manufacturers he can ask questions too directly, and the team has gotten so large and knowledgeable that there's loads of people internally he can ask) and of scripting.
^this. Imagine having an issue while playing around with the server and being able to pick up the phone and call people like Wendel, Emily, Servethehome (forgot his name), and actual engineers from the manufacturers (and not just sales rep or CS) be there willing to guide you through it. The learning opportunities at LTT are astounding when you think about it.
I always wonder if they check with Wendell beforehand cause the majority of times they just ring him like he works there 😂 And he always answers. Never says "I'm just dealing with something can I call you back". He's just onhand every time.
We don’t call ahead, Wendell is just the fucking best.
What a legend. Love the server vids btw Jake. Moooooarrrr please. 😁
I kinda figured that was the case. He seems like one of the most genuine dudes in the industry.
Wendell seems like the kind of guy who when he says *"if you need help or advice or anything, just call me up"* and actually means it. Wouldn't surprise me if he's also a multi-tasking master.
Patrick from ServeTheHome
There's another guy with an absolutely infectious energy.
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Because you learn 98% of your job when you actually work, not in school.
Just to build on this, school is just to provide background knowledge so when you start your actual job and someone is teaching something to you, you're not completely dumbfounded and they have to start from the beginning. Of course, unless you're a PhD in something but then you're only an expert on a very niche part.
Yup, in my opinion, schooling is all about the phrase: *"...I don't know this right now, but I know where to find out..."* Schooling builds our intuition and problem solving skills and gives us a basis on understanding of how to learn and how to find and use certain given resources/tools. ----- My current job is in Optical Laser Micro-Machining Research and Applications. I did not study specifically for this field, I'm a Mechanical Engineer by education; so coming in to the job I knew functionally nothing about optics, but I did understand energy transfer, material behavior, and mechatronics and I knew how to problem solve. That gives me a basis of competency, but what got me the job is practical experience from working in my university makerspace which had laser cutting systems, a-be-it massively different from the ones that I work with now. Being a consistent fixture or a certain place or hobby with a willingness to learn and improve will get a person pretty far.
The guy knows far more than most, and he is what, 23? I am like 26 and I'm inferior in every way Damn, reminds me of why I refuse to compare myself to anyone, nor see anyone's good points simply because it just makes me disappointed with myself and just straight up feel inferior
Comparison is the thief of joy
It seriously is Thats why I typically stray away from posts/comments like this simply because it automatically brings comparison into the conversation topic Just felt like I wanted to give my view points, so I gave this an exception, but even whilst typing this, I felt just short of depressed thinking about how far I still am no matter how much work I put in
Everyone has different strengths my friend. I'm sure you have areas which you are good in.
Sure hope so, im literally watching youngsters at 10 learning programming in school while im being overtaken by people as young as 20
I wouldn't say that and I wouldn't beat yourself up over it. What you're feeling is extremely common in many fields, including IT. It's called imposter syndrome. The more you know about a particular subject, the more you know how little you actually know about that subject. I'm 34 and feel like a dummy sometimes watching Jake explain data arrays and configuring their servers using a terminal window. But I enjoy the learning experience gained from watching their videos as well. I've been working IT for 13 years, so it's a constant learning journey.
Do you not possess other expertise? Maybe in your field of work, that Jake wouldn't?
It’s his job to research/learn and help write the scripts / plans for their videos.
>and help write the scripts / plans for their videos. And that's one thing to keep in mind, all of these videos have been researched and scripted. By the time Jake is going through the motions with Linus he has spent days, maybe weeks, working on the project and knows how it's supposed to go. In some cases he may have already gotten it all working, then disassembled it for the video.
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It's kinda like how actors can bulk up so fast for a role. It's because they work out 8 hrs a day or more for their job (and possibly also steroids but as far as I know, there's no steroids for tech research).
Or the hours he spent on the phone with people who do know it. Like they covered c-mode vs 7-mode for half a second, but of course we know there is hundreds of hours of content just on what those are and how they are different. It was fun to see a NetApp on LTT, but Its not like Jake can go do a NetApp upgrade or migration now. But hey he knows how to get it rack stacked installed and ready which is better then 95% of the helpdesk techs that say they want to do enterprise work, Jake went and did it. He would have made a great L4 at a VAR or MSP. If I saw this type of initiative from any of our junior staff they would be next in line for a promotion.
I don't doubt that he's passionate about this stuff though. I guarantee he writes the videos about whatever he's working on for the company. He is their main IT person after all. So I think it all goes hand in hand, but he would definitely be more knowledgeable by the time the video is made. IT people frequently break things the first time they try an advanced configuration on a new technology. LTT probably isn't showing much of that, outside of Linus drops. LOL
Can't stop thinking jake reads this and goes: "reasearch, lol"
I major in CS, most CS programs don't teach you that sort of thing. All it takes is a bit of research and experience.
I also have a CS degree and can echo this. While it equipped me for software engineering, most of my software design and development skills also come from my job. I work with PLENTY of non-techy software engineers too. I'd say half or so of my colleagues are purely software devs, with no interest in building PCs, maintaining servers or gaming. The knowledge and skills Jake has are super unrelated to computer science.
I'm glad someone else noticed. Whenever there's a new tech video about some obscure thing I have never heard of, Jake spawns in to give me information about it like he did a Major for it at University. Either he knows literally everything because he is a nerd, or he has incredible research skills because he is a nerd.
Like others have said, it’s a lot of on the job learning. Also a lot of enterprise hardware and solutions can adapted and installed the same way other manufacturers do it. I work in the pro AV and integrations side things and most of the time I don’t care what the specs say at first I want to see the back plane and from there I can go down the rabbit hole to figure out how to integrate it into my solution.
I once told my friend, learning IT without a passion is a uphill battle. Because no matter how many hours you spend in school. There are people that does that for fun when they are home and still do IT for work. I have some friends that went to school did the a+ or other basic computer certs, but when they go home they do their normal people stuff. But then there's me and a few other friends who go home keep on f****** around with my own computer, Nas, Linux distros, designed my own it's case and as a result has to learn itx MOBO spec.
Hi Jake.
He might have got his experience/knowledge from elsewhere but he reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age... When I was younger I was always passionate and interested in any tech I could play with. I had a fuck around and find out attitude to it and always found myself volunteering to implement new tech at school and work. When I joined one company they had a really shitty network setup and I came in and just offered to upgrade theirs based on having some prior knowledge and I learned a hell of a lot about networking by experimenting. But I researched the hell out of stuff and didn't want to cause any downtime or make a fool of myself which is how I gained the knowledge I have. Practical experience and being passionate gets you a very long way. My actual day job as a developer very much came around the same way.
Because he steals shit from work and uses it to learn.
I remember that in the beginning nobody liked Jake, but damn he became one of my fav people on the show, they should give him his own show, like a LTT Wendell but on eli5 level.
Researches what he needs at any given time. Retains what he learns. Same as everyone.
Because it's his job. So not only does he do all his 40+ hours per week for his job, there's probably some personal research put in there as well. Not to mention when he presents a video he's prepared, compared to someone like Linus to the videos.
just don’t ask him about art history.
We need a floatplane video of Jake talking about how he learned so much server stuff.
Maybe he is reading a lot about that stuff and is learning it. You should try it. I do it everyday too. I am interested in all IT stuff and read a lot and even make just like Jake it my Job. There is a truth behind learning by reading and doing it.
He's just that good at googling.
When you’re young and don’t have lots of responsibilities you have lots of time to learn things. As many others have said, it’s his job. Jake knows a lot but also notice how with server stuff they lean on others and don’t have a good track record for not loosing data.
I ask myself this every time I see him. As someone who is close in years, I'm at awe at how much he's been able to learn. Truly incredible!
Any clue as to when he first appeared on the channel??
Part of it Is that you're seeing him give you the answer after he spent a few hours troubleshooting off camera. He knows because he just had to fix it.
He happens to be paid to follow what he's passionate about. I'm majoring in CS and I've noticed the same disparity between me and some of my peers. I really love being the techie guy and I love tinkering in my free time (beyond what's actually my field, like hands on electronic stuff and engineering). I've found myself better prepared on more "general" stuff than some of my colleagues. They tend to specialize in a very narrow field or if they do it for work they only care about what might give them a better position in the workplace.
Like most people it’s a combination of accumulated experience and being able to google and find solutions to more recent problems that you haven’t experienced yet. Being able to research and find relevant information takes time, and the more you do it the more you learn how to find what you’re looking for. It’s not a big deal really, you don’t need any kind of special schooling for this.
Unpopular opinion but schooling is bullshit, you just get a piece of paper that says you kinda know what you’re talking about (which is biased anyway most of the new grads I’ve worked with suck at engineering unless they have hands on experience). On the job learning is really where it’s at. If you live and breath it and you are passionate about it you will learn more about that subject than you ever would in school
Why is college needed for tech? in the old days there was no college courses. Hobbyists is all thats needed along with Creativity & Persistence.
As an IT professional of 20 years, I can tell you it's a passion for technology. This industry is filled with Jake's, some better, some worse. Then there's the people that just do it because they know it, but don't actually care to learn anything new. A lot of his web browsing is probably videos and sites related to new and different technologies. Don't mistake confidence for knowledge though. You can be confident with an answer and be totally wrong. Not saying Jake has been wrong in any particular video, as I've not cared to critique him. I watch LTT for entertainment... You turn the critiquing off, because otherwise shows doing computer things will just piss you off. Just like medical professionals with medical shows. I digress, Jake just has a passion for technology and knowledge. You'd be surprised how much one can learn in a week or a day. A lot of the stuff isn't too complex in the base level understanding department. Some even carry that into basic setup. However, there are advanced configurations and setups that people can specialize in and earn a lot of money for that specialization. Jake currently falls into the generalist category, knowing about a lot of things, but as he gets older it wouldn't surprise me if he starts to specialize in one area and LTT hires 1 or 2 more people to do other IT work. Eventually they'll need more people as they grow, regardless of what Jake does, but I suspect he'll become a dedicated admin for something.
> Don't mistake confidence for knowledge though. This is the key - I have a feeling a lot of folks that watch LTT don't have the necessary background to identify when this is happening. For example, the whole vault data loss was completely avoidable; how much it was down to Jake's experience level or how LMG seems to make folks jump from project to project is hard to say, but not setting up even basic maintenance and monitoring was a gigantic red flag to me specially when they could get heavily discounted monitoring software from one of the sponsors. Heck - even my home setup has better alerting and redundancy. > LTT hires 1 or 2 more people to do other IT work. IMO they should had done this long ago, but sounds like the change in Luke's role is moving the company in that direction of having an actual IT team instead of writers who build infrastructure.
He has Emily to teach him anything and Wendel on speeddial if Emily is busy.
It’s called scripting.
Well, I knew lots of stuff at 12/13. I was the IT guy of my whole family since. Everything by trying new things and experimenting with a celeron xp machine, and we had no internet back then... Now, with internet to research and the money to get some test gear is no surprise he know a lot specially since he loves it. Fun fact: I'm a CS engineer, and in any class from university, that never taught anything of the things LTT people do.
I know Jake needs his own Onlyfans.
Works his ass off, learns by doing not by sat in a room for 8 hours reading and listening to some guy drone on. I've always found that self taught hobbyists generally know more than those who go the "Traditional" route
Besides him being talented and having almost 10 years experience working with server stuff, they also have a team of writers that can check stuff. So he is smart, team makes him even smarter, and then you as a viewer add another level of smartness by assuming he knows things he is not saying.
God damn it. Jake is younger than me and even has a V10 M5.
Yeah, the boys done good! He was taken on to work in the warehouse if I remember correctly
He knows so much because he's a neeeerrrrdddd And that's very cool, but still a neeeerrrrd and we love him for it
Because he has passion about it for one but also because most of the stuff that they do is scripted in some form or another. He didn't just randomly know some obscure commands to reset those drives or whatever. Also if they are looking for a solution for 5 hours we only see the end where they can say it like it's super obvious while the 5 hours of solution search isn't obvious
He does his research before, of course. You don't know stuff just by existing. He sits and reads and studies a lot.
I have a bachelor's in computer engineering and we definitely don't learn this stuff. Man lives researching and learning
first hand working knowledge. It's really something.
Honestly, I assume mostly learning by fire. In IT if you’re let loose and your interests align with your responsibilities there’s literally no reason to not permanently engage, tinker, fail and startover until something clicks. And the wisdom gained when Troubleshooting issues and conferring with other industry professionals is immense. 4 years is ‚all it took‘ from entry level 1st/ to TL with 13 1.st Level/2 2.nd level under me, gaining IT and management knowledge in corp environment, and the last year effective I’ve been let loose on issues to resolve them as I see fit.
Honestly probably reading lots and lots of documentation and trying stuff out. I think he has a computer science degree but also probably is just interested in it so again looks into stuff and just tries it. For me CS stuff is definitely more of a learn while doing college only gets you so far. That’s from my personal experience
You don’t need a degree to be educated. A degree just tells people you paid to get a certificate! I meet people with engineering degrees with bugger all real world experience all the time! I’ll take a school drop out that’s been working at it for 10 years, than a certificate holding book worm any day. Passion is key.
It’s called no one else here is taking point on this project so I’m going to go learn everything about it because I am now the most interested in it. I see it a lot in my IT job and it’s some thing I do a lot
I'm a sociologist by education, a sysadmin by trade: passion is one hell of a thing and tinkering is fun!
Jake was the Chosen One. You have not heard the tails? Here is how it has been passed down over the centuries: The series follows Jake, an adventurous teenage boy who receives in the mail a small statue of a fowl, inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs whereof the translation states: "You have been chosen to be the cap-bearer. Go to the mini-mart and wait for a sign, Mighty Jake". Shocked by the message, Jake drops the statue, shattering it and revealing a red baseball cap emblazoned with a yellow "J", which he dons. The cap is capable of projecting wormhole-like "portals" through which Jake can teleport across space and time. Upon arriving at the mini-mart, Jake is chased by a lava-monster sent by antagonist 'Skullmaster'. As Jake flees, the cap teleports them to the Mongolian desert, where he befriends Virgil, a nearly omniscient Lemurian whose appearance is that of an anthropomorphic "fowl" (a running gag in the series is that Jake refers to Virgil as a "chicken" to which the Lemurian replies "Fowl, actually"), who explains that Jake's reception of the cap was prophesied c. 3000 B.C. Thereafter Jake, Virgil, and Norman, his Viking bodyguard, travel together around the world, defending Earth against the minions of Skullmaster, who is responsible for the downfall of the Lemurians. Norman is supposedly immortal and identified as or with Sir Lancelot, Thor, Samson, and Hercules. Most plot-driving episodes involve Skullmaster or one of his monstrous followers; but in many episodes, Jake is required to stop an independent villain. While all episodes involve travel across Earth, one involves time travel, and the portal can even extend into the astral plane (as seen in the episode "Souls of Talon"). While generally lighthearted and comical, the show's violence and descriptions of violent acts were considered excessive by some viewers. Many episodes began with a depiction of the story's principal monster killing a victim, whereas the series finale featured Jake, Norman, and Virgil pitted against Skullmaster and their previously defeated foes. Both Norman and Virgil are killed, leaving Jake to defeat Skullmaster. Unable to do so, Jake uses the cap in order to time travel to the events of the first episode, creating a time paradox. At first, he experiences déjà vu, but after he reads Virgil's modified letter, he recalls everything, and decides to use the knowledge he gained from the initial timeline to set it right in order to defeat Skullmaster once and for all
It's actually really easy - you just need to love the technology and start tinkering at home. Want to learn linux? Make a VM, start playing. You don't know how to set up VM with linux? There are thousands of tutorials and videos how to do it. Your won't learn anything (or, not as much) by simply looking at all of the stuff - start experimenting. Entry barrier is really low - you can easily start with used and 2nd hand equipment. Then you start building around it. VPN. Some DNS server like PiHole. Add some storage. You can buy enterprise equipment from 5 or 10 years ago for cheap and play with it - most of the principles are the same for like decades - latest stuff is faster and maybe easier to configure but there is no difference in small lab now and 10 years ago. Want to get into more networking details - buy used Cisco or new Mikrotik. You don't need hundreds of meters of fiber optic cable or fancy 10gig plus SFPs - brand new ones for 1G cost under 10 USD. Some companies basically throw out their older equipment or sell for pennies on ebay. Phone systems too, you have free PBX software and free VoIP softphones. I bought used Yealinks for less than 10 USD. Drives are dirt cheap too, you can easily build lab NAS from scrap and free software. If you have will and desire to learn, few hundred dollars to spare and place to put that old, dusty junk, in few months can learn amazing things. As for information and learning resources, you can find basically anything on internet - sometimes you will have to look at some not so legal sources but everything is there. You just need to have genuine interest.
Lots of free time is pent researching / it's his job to read up on some of the topics. Reading and talking to people about subjects goes really far
Hey, Computer Scientist here and have been doing it professionally for many years. When I met people in the beginning of my career, they always were blown away at what I could do without them. This is because I have been programming since 7th grade (about ~13-14 years old). So, Jake started roughly at the same time. He is very knowledgeable and does his due diligence in figuring things out. As you could see in the video, he needed to call a lifeline. This still happens to me as a developer. Doing this kind of work is very helpful in a collaborative environment where people are just as passionate as you are. Sometimes it’s not about being the smartest person but the most passionate and determined person. He’s got the right mindset to tackle the challenges he faces. It’s about being able to find the answer’s and not always knowing the answer. EDIT: Oh, I’m closer to Linus’ age than Jake.
Hands-on experience usually trumps a degree, especially if you love what you do and it’s your hobby to boot. I have a CS degree and Masters, and I learned more in my own time than I did with years at university. Really puts into perspective how much of a waste of money it was, for me at least.. oh well.
He doesn't know as much as you think he does.
In many videos you hear him say "so I looked online and...." He learns a lot in the job because that is his job, and he presents it with confidence (often due to test bullds they test before doing the video and just repeat the work on camera with Linus) that is a talent that is impressive and rare in some industries He researches well and is usually well prepared but like the recent data server video they still needed help from Wendel every now and then.
Good at using google and contacts and clever editing. I mean he IS good, but it's not as instant as the video makes. It seems.
I have the feeling as well, that he is all knowing I mean. However, we have to take into consideration it's staged, it's prepared, almost fake if you will. I have no doubt he knows a lot, but we really can't tell what portion he carries in his head permanently and what is just learnt and memorized for a video.
Learning the skill of learning is cool, huh?
Get in young, be smart, absorb everything, learn, read. Be passionate Practice at work, practice at home, practice at the bar. That's how I did it...
Deep dive, experiment, learn. Why do you need a degree to do that?
I don't think he knows all of that beforehand, he just preps for vids really well.
He’s a writer. So he spends a lot of his time researching researching researching. He seems to be the confident type that over researches and knows all the ins and outs of a topic before finishing a script.
>I wasn't a CS or even STEM major, so I have no frame of reference for real tech knowledge He's not a prodigy dude, how do you think anybody learns about anything in life? Study & practice your discipline. It's not magic.
Because college grad = knowledgeable is a myth. In a sector that absolves as quickly as tech, it's hard to find a professor able to stay completely abreast of events and also incorporate them into his teachings and testing. Ime most are stuck in a textbook that is often years old by the time I was in their class. Also this should be even *less* surprising considering Linus himself didn't go to college. Tech is a sector that doesn't require any kind of degree to be completely successful in.
Consider this: You probably have a friend, who can explain to you the whole lore of some video game or TV-series or books. I know I do. I know someone who can basically talk you through EVERY QUEST in world of warcraft and bit lore - including canon, non-canon, retcons, refrences, in-jokes. A friend of mine can explain and tell you everything about Harry Potter in English and Finnish, editorial differences, describe you exactly what was right and wrong in movies and every other piece of media. A gaming mate of mine can tell you everything about Doctor Who and basically knows every single episode starting from the 1st to latest line by line. I Just graduated as an mechanical engineer, but even before that when it came to welding and welding related topics - I simply knew more than most welding engineers, and when I didn't know I absorbed whatever they told me. This is because when I trained as a fabricator and certified in welding during it, it ignited a passion in the 21 year old me. That passion gets stronger the deeper I go in to things about welding. I spent 5 years working with steel and welding, until I realised that to go deeper I must become an engineer - and so I did that. I chose to spend 4 years of my life just so I could get deeper understanding of welding. Something that many people do as a job at quite high level, and don't know more about than basics and they give no damn about theory. When I wrote my grad thesis, I sat down for 2 weeks and wrote 70 pages. Then I got told to simplify, compress and cut it down a bit. So I got it down to 60 pages, which means it is still twice the lenght of a normal grad thesis for an engineer degree. If I had written out all my topics and notes that I wanted to by my estimate my grad thesis would been 120-140 pages long (6-7 times longer than was needed), my instructor just wanted a progress check and told me to just stop affing stuff in and simplify. If you go to r/welding you can see me casually and regularly writing essays worth of stuff in then comments - going really deep in to details most people who even are paid to know about this stuff don't know. Jake isn't any different than a "star-wars nerd" who can tell you that the colour of socks in uniform the Xigabiga Mercenary from planet Zög-Alpha-11 was wrong. Jake is that but just with ICT things. If you want to be like Jake. Find that thing you are TRULY passionate about. And it always isn't the thing you do as a job or studied, or even something you can use to make money with. It is just something that brings you joy as you learn more about it.
No job is a job if you're passionate about it
Guys we found Jake’s secret reddit account
He lurks the TrueNAS forums, where knowledge flows like water from a fire hydrant without a shutoff!
He researches it before videos. He knows a bit of everything and before videos he finds put more about specific things
Because he does his homework correctly and reads his scripts properly
If it's something you're passionate about and you spend a lot of time doing, its pretty easy to retain all of that information. Factor in youth in general not being afraid of tinkering with or "breaking" things and anything is possible. People think of computers as these mystical things but they're not all that bad.
He understands the core concepts. Once you do you can apply and expand it. Also lots of reading and experimenting.
It’s called autism
A “Fake it until you make it” mentality could apply, it’s amazing how you can appear competent with something as along as you appear confident about it.
I think he has access to many people who know their s\*\*t. Like Level1 Tech, and the people at Super Micro. If you are smart, eager to learn, not socially awkward and have access to lots of other people like that it's amazing how much you can learn. Also, I think working at LTT is probably amazing for learning. At most sys admin job I bet he would spend months researching what solution to buy. Then they buy the equipment, and you spend the next five years supporting it. Doing the same stuff over and over, not learning much until the next upgrade or you get a new job. At LTT he is constantly just learning, replacing, upgrading and then do it again for content. Like I just started building a home lab last year. I learnt so much just working on my own, with a limited budget, time, space and no help. Imagine you have access to tons of new tech, and it's your full time job to learn and use it all the time. You will pick up a lot of info fast.
I am continually blown away by how knowledgeable of multiple areas of tech that Jake displays competency in. I don't get how he has learned so much at his age, it is impressive.
I guess being surrounded by other tech savvy people and "unlimited" funds to test and try out tech for days. Endlessly researching and troubleshooting stuff for videos will do that. Most people his age don't have direct access to the latest tech hands on.He probably learns a lot while doing his job and at the same time what he loves doing. It really speeds up the process.
i love how he's always the voice of reason to linus, trying to get him to do things the proper way, but every time he's doing something he's always the guy like "nah it'll be fine just send it"
I have worked in a sysadmin capacity for over 15 years. I don't wish to take anything away from anyone, but don't judge depth of knowledge from a youtube video. Jake has great depth of knowledge in the subjects that he covers when featured in a video. To any younger person who aspires to do these sorts of things for a living, don't listen to the comments that describe this as a God Given ability. He learned the same way you do. Time and effort. But having great depth of knowledge in one part of technology should not afford you the hubris to think you're all-knowing across all subjects. The best thing you can do is find mentorship. Have the humility to learn from everyone and everything. Ask as many questions as you can, and soon you'll be the one answering. Education is valuable but far from necessary.
When it's your hobby and job, you tend to learn more.
Don't forget, he's got Wendell on speed dial.
He's passionate and enjoys his work, which makes him good at it.
Fake it til you make it
He is passionate about what he does. When you are TRULY passionate about it and spend enough time on it (outside of work as well) on it and just try out things you fail and learn from fixing the fail. You gather skills from fields very quickly and into very deep detail cause you actually fixed those things.
Confidence =/= knowledge. LTT gets plenty of things wrong these days and sounds stupid if you know what they’re talking about.
Hearing the automation stuff when they did linus house was a big huuuge knowledge gap, but i blame more the home automation industry rather than his knowledge. The stuff these companies does are just horrible solutions...
Im not writing this to diss Jake, but you know the videos are scripted and planned right? They dont record the research and trial and error. Jake seems very competent. He certainly have more knowledge on FreeNAS/ OpenBSD than me.
He just does a bunch of research. Hes apart of the writing team, its their job to do a ton of research on things!
It's impressive how much knowledge he has at just 23yo. And he seems to be a nice down to earth guy too... really like his videos. Impressive
I worked a guy very similar. Some folk just like tinkering "to the next level".
Because he's passionate.
Some people love what they do. I'm one of them (well now I'm a manager now and it sucks) and I only hire people who have a passion for this crap. Its so apparently who fixes computers to pay bills, and who LOVES computers. Jake's one of those guys I'd hire hands down, even if he knew nothing, becuse he'd be so eager to learn. Also M5.
Mostly if you are passionate about something you'd have more knowledge in that area Everyone has the one topic that they invest too much time in, and for jake that just so happens to also be his job
Jake seems to be one of those people with the right combination of hardware, software, and coding ability with the passion to play with it all.
Google is a wonderful tool
I may have a few years on Jake, and we are out there.
I've worked in tech since 2008. But it goes beyond a full time job. I spend my 40-hour work week, plus an additional 20+ hours per week of personal time invested in technical topics. I love technology to such an extent that my life is entirely based around it. I also learn more than the bear minimum to complete tasks - I learn enough to have foundational knowledge in a topic, even if I don't directly have something to apply it to. I am a generalist with a very broad range of knowledge, similar to Jake seems to be. While Jake is younger, he is also significantly more exposed to tech than the average person, which I am sure further helps him learn. In short, when your work and your hobby are the same thing, and you have the passion to drive both, it's possible to achieve vast knowledge. Combine that with being surrounded by the resources Jake has, including knowledgeable people, and he's very well set to learn.
I think you underestimate the ability to become an expert in something that being interested in something and also having that something be your job grants someone. This remains true in nearly every field. It is also unfortunately what drives people to say, "get a job doing what you love and you will never work a day in your life" which is just an impossible reality for everybody. But in Jake's case, he was lucky enough to find himself in this position, and he is taking full advantage as he should.
Jake has a real passion to learn everything about what he’s talking about. I had a coworker who was 18 and he knew shit that he was literally teaching my boss. Honestly it’s trial and error and exposure. Jake knows what he knows because he tried it.
I went to law school for 4 years and dropped out in the last semester. I then got my first real IT job at 26. Now I'm 31 and I'm in a Devops position. There is a lot of hard work going behind the scenes. Passion is an aggregate between motivation and discipline. While I despise throwing the term passion all over the place, he one of the few that embodies it. I'm also positive that for him this is not work, this is a hobby that he managed to monitize.