4 ms·

What does the fact that developers are expensive has in common with infrastructure/ops? You mean that developers shouldn't be working on it? I couldn't agree mo

by tachion 10y ago

What does the fact that developers are expensive has in common with infrastructure/ops? You mean that developers shouldn't be working on it? I couldn't agree more, just like I wouldn't like my dentist being my heart surgeon! Developers should write the code, but they should not be doing infrastructure nor operations, and they should not enforce some 'serverless' utopia on projects/situations where pure infrastructure competence would do its job.

mabbo 10y ago
Depends on where you work. If you're a three-nan start up, you don't have an infrastructure or ops team. You do everything. As well, companies who have dedicated infrastructure teams are wasting money when we reach a world where that problem is purely automated. And that's where I think we're going.
- tachion 10y ago
  Sure, sometimes you cant have it all, but in my experience (and hey, I am aware that I'm biased here!) I've seen ops engineers being better at programming than developers at doing ops. Another reason why I'd prefer to have 2 devels and 1 ops person is that that single ops person can bring to the table entirely different experience and point of view and that's a pure added value here. If you think that infra teams is wasting money, then I'd say its the same case of 'serverless utopia' - when you're using 'purely automated serverless' platform you're paying way more money, because, hey, someone has to build that infrastructure and it isnt magic, its people, ops people. So what you're doing here is simply changing money buckets labels in your head and you have to now deal with a product that's tailored for everyone, instead of you specifically.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    If you make a few competing 3-man startups. One team has 2 devs and an op guy One team has 3 devs, one of which knows enough ops to ship code One team has 1 dev, 1 MBA, and 1 QA One team has 1 MBA, 1 QA, 1 Marketing guy I pick the 3 dev team, and hope each of them can fill in some of the other roles on the side (ops, marketing, qa). Not everyone would pick the dev team, but I would.
    - tachion 10y ago
      How about I pick team with 3 ops persons I know, and all of them are better programmers than some of the professional developers I had to work with? And they also can do marketing and sales! ;) How come this approach can sound insane, but the 'full devs on' can't? I pick 2 devs 1 ops every single time, because, you know, OPS PEOPLE CAN CODE TOO as well 'good enough' as devs can do ops good enough and with 2 devs in team we've already developer skills covered. All I'm asking for is some sane approach instead of 'devs can do everything well enough'.
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        Not really sure I understand what you are saying. Ops is not hard. A good dev can do it. I am a developer, not an ops person. I have written 100s of ansible scripts. I have dealt with deployments of single servers up to 100 servers across all kinds of hosts. Your argument is "OPS PERSON CAN CODE TOO" My argument is "DEV PERSON CAN OPS TOO" Really labels are stupid.
        sten 10y ago
        I took it as a lampoon on the "Full stack dev in x" bullshit that gets tossed around. It does sound insane to expect the devs to also be marketing gurus and finance experts and legal wizards... but no one bats a eye at the idea of "PhD. ML who also knows front end JS".
collyw 10y ago
Why shouldn't we? I can do all of that. I can write better code than the the writers of the last two applications I have inherited (admittedly my sysdamin skills are probably less than a full time sysadmin, but good enough). I guess following your analogy. If you only had a dentist and a salesperson available to do your heart surgery, who would you choose?
- tachion 10y ago
  Well, mostly because you don't have the years of experience in doing it, pretty much that. Because most of devs live only on their laptops ('works for me' syndrome), without thinking about networking, hardware underlying, OS tuning, security and other things. That's generalization of course, and I am glad you can do it all, I'd wish to have chance working with people like you more, but the reality is that you're an unicorn. Reversing your argument, why can't I do your job? I mean, I've programming skills probably worse than full time developer, but I've did my share or development and I think they're good enough ;) Why 'good enough' should be acceptable when its infrastructure and operations, but not acceptable when its development? I'd go and look for actual surgeon. Or bite the bullet and try to live my life as it goes, without risking complete failure of both these guys messing with my heart. ;)
  - 1138 10y ago
    Devs that don't think about the environment their code runs in are bad devs. Sadly, this group seems to be large.

by tachion 10y ago

mabbo 10y ago

Depends on where you work. If you're a three-nan start up, you don't have an infrastructure or ops team. You do everything. As well, companies who have dedicated infrastructure teams are wasting money when we reach a world where that problem is purely automated. And that's where I think we're going.

tachion 10y ago
Sure, sometimes you cant have it all, but in my experience (and hey, I am aware that I'm biased here!) I've seen ops engineers being better at programming than developers at doing ops. Another reason why I'd prefer to have 2 devels and 1 ops person is that that single ops person can bring to the table entirely different experience and point of view and that's a pure added value here. If you think that infra teams is wasting money, then I'd say its the same case of 'serverless utopia' - when you're using 'purely automated serverless' platform you're paying way more money, because, hey, someone has to build that infrastructure and it isnt magic, its people, ops people. So what you're doing here is simply changing money buckets labels in your head and you have to now deal with a product that's tailored for everyone, instead of you specifically.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  If you make a few competing 3-man startups. One team has 2 devs and an op guy One team has 3 devs, one of which knows enough ops to ship code One team has 1 dev, 1 MBA, and 1 QA One team has 1 MBA, 1 QA, 1 Marketing guy I pick the 3 dev team, and hope each of them can fill in some of the other roles on the side (ops, marketing, qa). Not everyone would pick the dev team, but I would.
  - tachion 10y ago
    How about I pick team with 3 ops persons I know, and all of them are better programmers than some of the professional developers I had to work with? And they also can do marketing and sales! ;) How come this approach can sound insane, but the 'full devs on' can't? I pick 2 devs 1 ops every single time, because, you know, OPS PEOPLE CAN CODE TOO as well 'good enough' as devs can do ops good enough and with 2 devs in team we've already developer skills covered. All I'm asking for is some sane approach instead of 'devs can do everything well enough'.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      Not really sure I understand what you are saying. Ops is not hard. A good dev can do it. I am a developer, not an ops person. I have written 100s of ansible scripts. I have dealt with deployments of single servers up to 100 servers across all kinds of hosts. Your argument is "OPS PERSON CAN CODE TOO" My argument is "DEV PERSON CAN OPS TOO" Really labels are stupid.
      - sten 10y ago
        I took it as a lampoon on the "Full stack dev in x" bullshit that gets tossed around. It does sound insane to expect the devs to also be marketing gurus and finance experts and legal wizards... but no one bats a eye at the idea of "PhD. ML who also knows front end JS".

collyw 10y ago

Why shouldn't we? I can do all of that. I can write better code than the the writers of the last two applications I have inherited (admittedly my sysdamin skills are probably less than a full time sysadmin, but good enough). I guess following your analogy. If you only had a dentist and a salesperson available to do your heart surgery, who would you choose?

tachion 10y ago
Well, mostly because you don't have the years of experience in doing it, pretty much that. Because most of devs live only on their laptops ('works for me' syndrome), without thinking about networking, hardware underlying, OS tuning, security and other things. That's generalization of course, and I am glad you can do it all, I'd wish to have chance working with people like you more, but the reality is that you're an unicorn. Reversing your argument, why can't I do your job? I mean, I've programming skills probably worse than full time developer, but I've did my share or development and I think they're good enough ;) Why 'good enough' should be acceptable when its infrastructure and operations, but not acceptable when its development? I'd go and look for actual surgeon. Or bite the bullet and try to live my life as it goes, without risking complete failure of both these guys messing with my heart. ;)
- 1138 10y ago
  Devs that don't think about the environment their code runs in are bad devs. Sadly, this group seems to be large.