He’s not wrong. Over complicating DevOps does take the control away from developers but I think a lot of the Ops part of DevOps is to create an internal PaaS that your devs can deploy to themselves.
The idea behind DevOps is that Dev(elopers) do their own Op(eration)s, rather than throwing stuff over the wall for a separate team to manage.
Not only has the industry done the opposite in many cases, they kept the name DevOps, meanwhile the full time operations staff have over complicated deployments and builds to the point that even they don't understand how they work anymore.
I think there is a place for both. Going into DevOps does not mean you need to get rid of your Ops team.
I like the approach when Ops are handling the backbone infrastructure of the organization while individual teams work in DevOps methodology meaning they are responsible for building necessary application infra, programs, as well as bringing it to production and monitoring.
This is also a great way of scaling teams - keeping a path of least resistance that is secure and compliant while giving observability and conventions.
It doesn’t make the infra technology more or less interesting?