Devops was never a profession. But I think it's dead anyway. The problem devops intended to solve was the lack of proper communication and mutual understanding

Devops was never a profession. But I think it's dead anyway. The problem devops intended to solve was the lack of proper communication and mutual understanding between developers and systems administrators. It has failed to solve this problem and, by the current definition, is getting farther and farther away from doing so. Two main reasons contribute to this conclusion: 1. For startups, trying to make due with the least number of people possible, the term has been taken to mean you need no systems administrators whatsoever. This is no different than startups have always done - have developers do everything - but now it's disguised as a good practice. 2. Developers and system administrators have different goals. These need not be opposing, but having people wearing two hats means sacrificing one goal for the other. Usually, reliability and long term maintainability suffers as developers (as a profession) are much more vulnerable to hype. Where startups are concerned, this may be irrelevant, as most go bust before this becomes a (culture) problem. But for established organizations, this can lead to disaster. Every organization needs people that care about staying ahead of the curve and people that care about keeping the service at its highest levels of reliability (=quality). Both kinds of people must participate in the process from the start, as peers, and keep each other in check. This is (should be) devops. PS: In the corporate scene devops is also dead, but because it now means "systems administrator" with no change in mentality, just to be cool.