Ask HN: How do you manage your IT/DevOps role?
This role is similar to others I've had in the past. It's great because there's lots of flexibility and not much micromanagement.
It's challenging because:
- I often need to learn and evaluate new products (e.g some SaaS we might want to use). On a related note it's often difficult to get good (sometimes any) support for products we're paying for, so I waste time debugging obscure issues or reading through confusing documentation
- I don't really have anyone to delegate to. I could coordinate with managers to negotiate for engineers' time, but this would take almost as long as just doing some of the tasks myself, so I don't do this
- Verification is difficult. Infrastructure doesn't have as good testing facilities as "regular" software does, and even when it does that still takes some setup, which must be balanced against everything else I'm supposed to be doing and the new things that come up.
- I often am asking for review for people not on my (mostly solo) team, which can take time and extra reminders
- I mostly get requests from everywhere, manage my own backlog, and people are busy enough that they really only see what they need to remind me to do (because there's a lot to do), rather than all the little things I get done
This is better than previous similar roles I've had, as the teams are nicer and I don't own everything I touch, but I feel I'm falling behind and will not get recognition unless I "sell" my accomplishments (which of course I don't have time to do anyway).
I don't really feel I can turn work down, and don't really care to, but I'm finding it difficult to get it all done and still work a regular amount of hours.
It's also difficult to ask for help, as in the past when I've asked for training I've been told things like "ohh that's not too hard", which is generally true for most products once you've got the hang of them, but never getting training on anything is a recipe for lots of half-baked solutions, or lots of time off the clock reading and experimenting.
I worry trying to define my role will lead to micromanagement. I worry not doing so will lead to burnout or me missing things. I worry discussing these issues with management or fellow engineers will make me look incompetent or unwilling to do my job. I also worry it's going to get increasingly difficult to advance in this role, as the more I do the more I'll be asked to look into, and with things being difficult to test/verify, the small tasks will continue to pile up as I try to work on the large tasks.
How have you handled this situation in the past, other DevOps/IT folks?
I added in IT because I'm also given administrative tasks as needed (migrating some accounts/debugging issues that aren't strictly software related).