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Excellence in development and exellence in operations does not necessarily overlap. IMHO the whole "devops" term is bogus since it's just the worst of both worl

by jjuhl 11y ago

Excellence in development and exellence in operations does not necessarily overlap. IMHO the whole "devops" term is bogus since it's just the worst of both worlds. You want experts at both ends of the spectrum, not a developer who can do some sysadmin tasks but not too well or a operational engineer who can write some code but not too well. Acknowledge that there are different fields and you need experts in both. Forget about aiming for a hybrid - it doesn't work. You'll just get incompetents who are able to pose as being good at both sides.

mpdehaan2 11y ago
(Ignoring the article ATM). Ultimately the "devops" term is widely applied to a bunch of things, usually meaning one or more of: * automating things as much as possible - infrastructure as code, continuous deployment, chatops, etc. * building tools for your organization to use to run your own infrastructure * fixing cultural and process problems between development and operations and cutting down on change requests, fixing communication, etc. * Often, about getting developers to build environments where the code they deploy uses the same automation in dev/test as in prod, and more closely resembles prod * Getting developers to care about production issues * Getting operations to understand more about development details rather than have a black box they are less likely to understand. Sometimes the title "Site Reliability Engineer" can mean that, sometimes. Sometimes DevOps means that. Lately "DevOps engineer" means some mix of infrastructure automation (basically systems administration) and writing a few tools or scripts (often these tools require some degree of coding). It can get more custom code heavy depending on the organization, but there's no real standard. But ultimately, "DevOps" is a (usually confusing) catch-all. Most "DevOps" conference are really a mix of agile, process, and systems administration topics, and many DevOPs meetups are usually about elevating one's game at systems administration and sometimes about Continous Deployment -- though even this can vary. Personally I like the tech parts and don't care as much for the cultural parts, having found a lot of it, once heard 4 or 5 times, becomes a bit "preaching to the choir" - i.e. folks know it already. Which is why I think once you learn the agile/process/communication bits, the meetups get to be more about tools - these things change and can be new, but there's some percieved duty to keep educating the new folks on the cultural stuff (especially as folks may feel some industries that are less startup-like are slower movers, or for folks in large corps that are slower to adopt things).
- late2part 11y ago
  Agreed. See similar confusion about what "Cloud" or "Agile" means :-)
- area51org 11y ago
  It's a catch-all that's used far too often to mean too many things. I once came across a post (from Red Hat maybe?) insisting that "doing DevOps" meant that you "get management and the techies together and talk about the elephant in the room". There was no explanation of what this elephant might be, or how having a meeting was "doing DevOps".
  - serge2k 11y ago
    What do you expect, it's a buzzword.
brazzledazzle 11y ago
You're really talking about how companies abuse devops as a way to hire someone who can step on everyone's toes without regard. Or save money. Or some political crap. But really devops is about sharing pain and aligning groups. And not even just Dev and Ops, that was just where it started. Anyone at a big company that's dealt with their finance, legal or HR teams knows alignment is critical. Companies that abuse it are basically trying to save money by trying to coopt the concept into an excuse to hire someone to do both jobs (which typically results in average or worse results in one or more of the roles). Or it's a power play by an exec. But ultimately it sours the whole thing for everyone that has the misfortune of being subject to it. I know there's a boatload of people that have "devops" in their titles these days and while I get that they're just taking advantage of a bad situation to make some extra money I still can't help thinking that most of them know they're hurting the concept by cooperating that way and that's pretty shitty.

by jjuhl 11y ago

mpdehaan2 11y ago

(Ignoring the article ATM). Ultimately the "devops" term is widely applied to a bunch of things, usually meaning one or more of: * automating things as much as possible - infrastructure as code, continuous deployment, chatops, etc. * building tools for your organization to use to run your own infrastructure * fixing cultural and process problems between development and operations and cutting down on change requests, fixing communication, etc. * Often, about getting developers to build environments where the code they deploy uses the same automation in dev/test as in prod, and more closely resembles prod * Getting developers to care about production issues * Getting operations to understand more about development details rather than have a black box they are less likely to understand. Sometimes the title "Site Reliability Engineer" can mean that, sometimes. Sometimes DevOps means that. Lately "DevOps engineer" means some mix of infrastructure automation (basically systems administration) and writing a few tools or scripts (often these tools require some degree of coding). It can get more custom code heavy depending on the organization, but there's no real standard. But ultimately, "DevOps" is a (usually confusing) catch-all. Most "DevOps" conference are really a mix of agile, process, and systems administration topics, and many DevOPs meetups are usually about elevating one's game at systems administration and sometimes about Continous Deployment -- though even this can vary. Personally I like the tech parts and don't care as much for the cultural parts, having found a lot of it, once heard 4 or 5 times, becomes a bit "preaching to the choir" - i.e. folks know it already. Which is why I think once you learn the agile/process/communication bits, the meetups get to be more about tools - these things change and can be new, but there's some percieved duty to keep educating the new folks on the cultural stuff (especially as folks may feel some industries that are less startup-like are slower movers, or for folks in large corps that are slower to adopt things).

late2part 11y ago
Agreed. See similar confusion about what "Cloud" or "Agile" means :-)
area51org 11y ago
It's a catch-all that's used far too often to mean too many things. I once came across a post (from Red Hat maybe?) insisting that "doing DevOps" meant that you "get management and the techies together and talk about the elephant in the room". There was no explanation of what this elephant might be, or how having a meeting was "doing DevOps".
- serge2k 11y ago
  What do you expect, it's a buzzword.

brazzledazzle 11y ago

You're really talking about how companies abuse devops as a way to hire someone who can step on everyone's toes without regard. Or save money. Or some political crap. But really devops is about sharing pain and aligning groups. And not even just Dev and Ops, that was just where it started. Anyone at a big company that's dealt with their finance, legal or HR teams knows alignment is critical. Companies that abuse it are basically trying to save money by trying to coopt the concept into an excuse to hire someone to do both jobs (which typically results in average or worse results in one or more of the roles). Or it's a power play by an exec. But ultimately it sours the whole thing for everyone that has the misfortune of being subject to it. I know there's a boatload of people that have "devops" in their titles these days and while I get that they're just taking advantage of a bad situation to make some extra money I still can't help thinking that most of them know they're hurting the concept by cooperating that way and that's pretty shitty.