Ask HN: The Fallacy of DevOps? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: The Fallacy of DevOps?

2 pointssdevonoes6 comments

> Under a DevOps model, development and operations teams are no longer “siloed.” Sometimes, these two teams are merged into a single team where the engineers work across the entire application lifecycle, from development and test to deployment to operations, and develop a range of skills not limited to a single function.

Before "devops":

- software engineers do development: bugfixing, introducing new features, maintenance of current features

- infrastructure engineers/sys admins: bootstrap environments locally or remotely so that software engineers can run their applications there

Now (with "devops" mentality):

- software engineers do development AND operations

So, "devops" to me seems a way for companies to get more from their employees by paying the same with the excuse of "Hey, software engineers, do you wanna develop a range of skills that will make your a better engineer and have more control on the stuff you do? Welcome to devops!... same paycheck tho!"

Obviously, many software engineers like to learn more for the sake of learning (e.g., me). I really like learning and even though officially I work as a software engineer, I do like to learn about operations and infrastructure stuff... but the idea that I can do the job of two persons (software engineer + infra engineer) but being paid the same as before, well, doesn't seem fair in my opinion.

More and more "software engineer" job offers are requiring experience with Docker, k8s, nginx, etc... and I'm fine and all, but hey, if I do know about software development (e.g., Golang and Postgress, and DDD, etc.) and on top of that I do know about "ops" (e.g., Docker, Ansible, k8s), well then pay me correspondingly.

DevOps isn't about doing the jobs of two persons (software engineer + infra engineer) it's about automating away 1 and being WAY more efficient.

Take a look at how GitHub does DevOps: Make your team’s deploys as boring as hell and stop stressing about it: https://zachholman.com/posts/deploying-software

Take a look at this funny video from Launch Darkly about different approach to DevOps: https://fast.wistia.net/embed/channel/mli3h9o3nh?wchannelid=...

Take a look at how AWS does DevOps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngnMj1zbMPY

Take a look at how Microsoft does DevOps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4uziBlC728

Engineering has to build that REPEATABLE DevOps automation @ scale.

The informed definition of DevOps is = "DevOps is the union of people, process, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to your end users." From Microsoft's Donovan Brown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW6x0jIPpr0

My two cents:

Since its inception, DevOps or ${SOMETHING}Ops strongly parallels:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Football

just checking as it seems you may be agreeing with OP. The wikipedia articles observes that total football "requires very intelligent and technically diverse players."

As such I think OP has a point: are these co.s really trying to hire engineers with sufficient competency in multiple domains, and if so is it reasonable to get incrementally better compensation for each domain one has strong competency in?

> So, "devops" to me seems a way for companies to get more from their employees by paying the same

It tends to give people somewhat broader responsibilities. And ideally they “do more” in terms of delivering more value, but that’s a “work smarter, not harder” thing—avoiding dev and ops working at cross-purposes and each frustrating the others attempts to deliver value because of lack of understanding outside of their own narrow part of the lifecycle.

But it doesn’t generally mean every developer needs more than a general awareness of ops > More and more "software engineer" job offers are requiring experience with Docker, k8s, nginx, etc... and I'm fine and all, but hey, if I do know about software development (e.g., Golang and Postgress, and DDD, etc.) and on top of that I do know about "ops" (e.g., Docker, Ansible, k8s), well then pay me correspondingly.

Software engineering salaries are rising faster than general pay levels, so pay is rising with the increased scope of skills. If you don’t feel.loke doibg it what it takes to keep up in one of thr highest

You clearly haven't read "the phoenix project" or "the DevOps handbook".

DevOps is about demolishing the walls between development and operations, in the sense of making both parties work together.

Basing on that, development needs some knowledge about operations tooling and operations people need some knowledge about development tools, if anything to build automation and to integrate with the software being built.

Yes, for these companies it’s almost always about squeezing more value out of the code monkeys. (It also produces better results but let’s be real no MBA is thinking about that.) They haven’t adapted to understanding how much leverage and value this gives those monkeys though, which is part of the reason they can’t hire or keep any of them.

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