It is true. People hire astoundingly incompetent devops all the time. I’ve seen it throughout my career. An issue is most hiring managers and CTO’s also don’t have a devops background, so it’s trivially easy for people to get into situations where they can BS some buzzwords and googled regurgitated definitions like CI/CD and it’s like “welp you know what you’re talking about.”

It’s highly compensated because it’s very needed. A low low % of operations engineers are as good as they need to be. It’s not even always the organization’s or the engineers’ fault, either, as the author of this blog alludes to.

Because no amount of money can compensate for the soul-sucking pain of being a YAML engineer.

Because the work conditions outside FAANG are garbage, no one that has any regard for their own well-being would get into it. So far everyone I have met that works in infra was in horrible shape, often from stress-related eating disorders and lack of physical exercise.

Do you base all your decisions about life on a pure money maximizing algorithm?

Picking a horrible position just because of a better salary is a great way to live an unhappy life.

This question is strange honestly... Because I have a career in software development and I really enjoy doing it? If I wouldn't be in this situation, maybe I would consider doing the switch based on what I've seen.

Because who wants to be a yaml engineer