HNUser34159

I think that is a gross mis-characterization because I see a ton of "get it done now, make it right later" bullshit among DevOps-y start ups.

Again, I think there's a large talent pool available, but startups who think they'll be the next FAANG act too big for their britches and actively discriminate against older tech workers who are likely experts in several pieces of the tech stack.

I routinely see these folks get passed over for younger, less experienced candidates (often for 1/2 to 3/4 the salary) who look good on paper because they wax eloquent about their pet project on GitHub, facial hair wax and kombucha.

Source: I make damn good money as a "fixer", and my primary customers are 5-30 person startups. I don't "code", and never will (useful scripts, and some automation/cloud API excepted).

I go in and practically beat the managers over the heads with the DevOps Handbook, and "engineers" with the NASA Systems Engineering Handbook. Most of my work is tearing out fucked k8s installs, and cutting AWS spending by 1/2 or more. (A few clients were billed based on how much I reduced their bill).

Have a standing job offer with one client, however it requires Azure certification pretty much immediately. Between not really using much MS stuff, and the exam focusing mostly on the Azure CLI, it might not be worth the trouble for a steady paycheck. They were nice enough to cover a training course though, so I'm willing to see where it goes.

So you are part of the problem then. You've globbed onto a bastardized concept of "DevOps", and refuse to allow other people into your walled garden.

At this point I'd trade having to manage over having to code.

Totally agree about context switching. I'm pretty much worthless at it.

You think maybe some of those folks are looking for an opportunity to LEARN some of that tech?

The "DevOps" fad is screwing over a large segment of senior level I.T professionals who are used to specializing. (Databases, Storage, OS, Security, etc.). I've also yet to see any startup that Jez Humble would actually call a DevOps shop.

Now, startups are hiring generalists with 3-5 years of "hacking" experience, or have a popular project on GitHub.

The goal is to stay gainfully employed without having a stroke.

There's a difference between keeping up with new tech, and completely changing what it is one does.

I would rather physically rack 100 servers in a day than write 100 lines of code in a day.

Yeah, I'd rather not. Pretty comfortable dabbling with Python for scientific projects, and a little API/JSON work. Pretty sure after more than fifteen years in IT, if I had the talent for code, it would have "clicked" by now.

Honestly, given the direction things are heading (Startups wanting generic worker drones, and not specialists) I'm about a hair's breadth from selling everything I own, and buying a $30,000 farm house somewhere in a rural flyover state.

Scripting and automation is one thing, but startups putting ops/architect roles through Fizzbuzz bullshit is a little annoying after a dozen or so interviews.

You don't need to sell me on sleep. I've often had to fight with c-level execs at some of the startups I've been at before with PROVEN studies and hard data showing that team performance rapidly degrades after 45-50 hours of work per week.

Mostly hardlocking on code, and issues committing syntax to memory. Which of course, given the extremely short timeframe (need to be certified in the next week or so) probably does amplify inherent exam anxiety.

This is a long standing issue, and why I usually don't touch code. However, as mentioned in other comments, the industry as a whole is moving ops/sysadmin type roles to generic script monkeys.

Seems that job function is becoming more "infra as code" though. Been poking at the job market and it looks like most "sysops" are Chef/Ansible/Puppet/Salt/Terraform/Cloud script monkeys these days.

I can't share too much detail. Long story short, I have to get that cert asap. (as in, within the next week or so). Work is covering it, and last week I did a 4 day training.

There's a lot to the exam I get, simply from experience. I'm getting slaughtered on the Azure CLI stuff since I simply cannot get the syntax to stick, no matter how many times I re-run through the labs.

The Azure Administrator Associate exam drills hard on their Powershell CLI stuff. I threw up and had to take a nap after doing the practice exam earlier today.

Based on the labs I've done, and other materials, I'd say it's NOT a "cheat sheet" exam.

It's really sorting out syntax and structures that fries my brain. Code never "sticks" with me, and I'm in a constant state of bootstrapping, for lack of a better term.

Who in Information Technology gets decent sleep?

When I "write" Python it's more like stitching together individual pieces into something that does the job.

Can't use stackoverflow on a certification exam.

I used to have very bad migraines in my early 20's. To this day I still avoid dried pineapple (like you find in trail mix), and "whoppers" candy.

My last actual migraine was in December of 2015