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Comment by Hnrobert42 | Hacker News Reader

This is a very timely post for me. I was just writing a DevOps job listing, but it felt wrong. We don’t have a lot of code, but we do have a lot of AWS infrastructure. It sounds like we should be looking for a Platform Engineer more than a DevOps Engineer. Of course the titles are less important than the work, but I think a different title will help focus the search better. So, thanks for posting!

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"The person who fiddles with our stuff on AWS"

I've held multiple titles doing this. Titles doesn't matter, because nobody respects what the titles implies.

If you are looking for someone who is very versitile in AWS and will also work on proposing architectural decisions:

Look for CloudOps, we often also have multiple certificates from Azure/AWS/DigitalOcean/Alibaba etc.

We not only keep infrastructure in code, but also make sure you are not ripped off by cloud provider and your architecture makes sense..

You make a good point about cloud cost optimization. That is not a core DevOps function, but it is something we need. Yet another reason to refocus our search.

I see more and more "platform engineer" in job listing, for what require the same skills as infrastructure/hosting/system engineer (regarding SaaS, at least).

Maybe the next buzzword will be "platform engineer".

Sort of off-topic, though I'm looking for a role similar to what you described. If you're open to chatting about it, please do shoot me an email: notsure_12 at protonmail.com

Infrastructure Engineer is also a common title for this role.

DevOps is not a title. That’s like looking for “agile engineer”. What it sounds like you need is a systems eng / sysadmin

DevOps Engineer is absolutely a title nowadays. Refusing it because you personally don’t agree with it doesn’t change anything; it’s what searched by both candidates as well as companies.

EDIT: Great explanation from one of the commenters https://link.medium.com/tC5p4nfYCib

Lol that is a ridiculous explanation. Most companies’ idea of “developer operations” is “someone needs to babysit that dinky old jenkins”, those that are serious about it certainly don’t call it devops in their job reqs

Again, you’re gatekeeping because of your personal believe. Check how the market looks like outside of your bubble.

Industry has moved on and if you need somebody to manage direction of your infrastructure (yes, be it just Jenkins or whole AWS) you will search for DevOps Engineer. There is no serious tier.

> Industry has moved on and if you need somebody to manage direction of your infrastructure

If you needed dedicated people so dev teams can just throw it over the fence to them that already existed and was just called sysadmins/ops. No need to invent a new term for that. More like some companies didn’t get the memo that devops != sysadmin, not even a title at all.

> There is no serious tier.

Well who’s in a bubble really?

I understand what you are saying. I have read blog posts that argue DevOps may be someone’s responsibilities, but it is not a title. I’ve read others that say DevOps is a method to managing code delivery, but not a title. I’ve read job descriptions and CVs that list DevOps as a title.

My conclusion is DevOps is a newly made up word. The technology community is still trying to agree on a definition. Like all words, that definition will change over time.

I think it is okay to have your favorite definition, but I would be careful inferring too much about someone’s “seriousness” or competence based on their choice of favorite definition.

All words are made up. What really ticks me off is the term got blatantly hijacked by unwitting orgs to mean almost polar opposite of what the original intended (same seems to have happened to Agile). So now competent orgs have to jump through the hoops to market related roles effectively

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