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I was thinkging about that Mike Dilworth quote: "DevOps is a culture, not a role! The whole company needs to be doing DevOps for it to work." It's one of thos

by jasode 9y ago

I was thinkging about that Mike Dilworth quote: "DevOps is a culture, not a role! The whole company needs to be doing DevOps for it to work." It's one of those kinds of statements that at first glance, looks really insightful and invites the head nodding up & down in agreement. However, thinking about it some more, that type of quote can be applied to anything. "Compliance is a culture not a role. Everyone from the CEO to the janitor should be aware of legal compliance. Having a compliance department is wrong." "Security is a culture not a role. Every employee should create quality passwords and follow proper encryption procedures, ..." "Marketing is a culture not a role...", "Design is a culture not a role...", "" etc, etc. Every employee should know/do everything. If you have a separate marketing team and design team, your company has failed. Yes, I can see where one ideal of devops is to "break down silos" and therefore, having a set of programmers who specialize in that is "recreating the silo" which is a contradiction. On the other hand, I can see the opposite view: if a company wholeheartedly embraces "devops", they will acknowledge that by having a team that focuses on devops. If you're a Google paying a programmer like Jeff Dean $500k+ a year, you really don't want him working on Chef/Puppet scripts instead of Tensorflow research. At a more advanced level of skills above Ansible/Docker automation is the SRE (Site Reliabity Engineers) which has a lot of overlap[1] with Devops focused engineers. A specialization in devops seems inevitable especially for larger companies that exceed 10 people. In short, I'm not sure why "devops" in particular has to rigidly adhere to Heinlein's "specialization is for insects".[2] As for other comments saying it's "title inflation", I'm confused as to the source of that sentiment. The "devops engineer" doesn't seem like a glamorous tile similar to "I'm CEO, bitch"[3]. There are no "50 Shades of Grey" movies where the female lead gets weak at the knees at the mere mention of "devops programmer". The "sanitation engineer" euphemism of "garbageman" I understand as inflation but "devops engineer" seems like a sideways or neutral label. I'm mystified by the outrage over this programming label. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_reliability_engineering#DevOps_vs_SRE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_reliability_engineering#D... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man [3] https://www.google.com/search?q="i%27m+ceo%2C+bitch" https://www.google.com/search?q="i%27m+ceo%2C+bitch"

allsunny 9y ago
I'll take your outrage comment has hyperbole, I've yet to see anyone that upset by it. Anyway, the frustration, I think, is it's just a new name applied to a role that always existed.
lmickh 9y ago
I think the DevOps is a culture statement is just as misleading to folks as the DevOps is automation/tooling. If you look at the early conversations, it was a discussion that outlined a management paradigm that borrowed heavily from Theory of Constraints in the manufacturing world. The discussion lead to a consensus among those involved that defined core values of culture, automation, measuring, and sharing (CAMS). To many people, DevOps means that paradigm. The examples you list (security, marketing, etc) are not paradigms composed of several values. They are business functions as infrastructure automation might be. We don't call the accounting team the "cash-flow" team cause it is a paradigm. Not a function. While I don't think it is worth falling on your sword over, the fact that folks care about the wording is good. It means they are thinking about more then just the function, but also the underlying paradigms.
mjdilworth 9y ago
i am not sure compliance, security and marketing etc. are cultural. I am pretty sure they are well defined skills/disciplines. The reasons why i believe devops is a cultural thing is because its not just about the technology, it is also about the process of executing work. you can use the tools and automate the shit out of everything, but this isnt devops. but if, as a full stack autonomous team, you are experimenting your way towards a target condition, (think lean), to elevate constraints, then you are working in a devops way. You cant work like this unless the organisational processes support it. We can then throw in all the great modern tools, software engineering methodologies, shift left, involve everyone in the organisation and then it does become a cultural movement. There is still a place for specialisation, but good specialists know how to work in loosely coupled way yet, function in an interdependent world. So,to summarise. its about the people, processes and technology and these things combined make it cultural.

by jasode 9y ago

allsunny 9y ago

I'll take your outrage comment has hyperbole, I've yet to see anyone that upset by it. Anyway, the frustration, I think, is it's just a new name applied to a role that always existed.

lmickh 9y ago

I think the DevOps is a culture statement is just as misleading to folks as the DevOps is automation/tooling. If you look at the early conversations, it was a discussion that outlined a management paradigm that borrowed heavily from Theory of Constraints in the manufacturing world. The discussion lead to a consensus among those involved that defined core values of culture, automation, measuring, and sharing (CAMS). To many people, DevOps means that paradigm. The examples you list (security, marketing, etc) are not paradigms composed of several values. They are business functions as infrastructure automation might be. We don't call the accounting team the "cash-flow" team cause it is a paradigm. Not a function. While I don't think it is worth falling on your sword over, the fact that folks care about the wording is good. It means they are thinking about more then just the function, but also the underlying paradigms.

mjdilworth 9y ago

i am not sure compliance, security and marketing etc. are cultural. I am pretty sure they are well defined skills/disciplines. The reasons why i believe devops is a cultural thing is because its not just about the technology, it is also about the process of executing work. you can use the tools and automate the shit out of everything, but this isnt devops. but if, as a full stack autonomous team, you are experimenting your way towards a target condition, (think lean), to elevate constraints, then you are working in a devops way. You cant work like this unless the organisational processes support it. We can then throw in all the great modern tools, software engineering methodologies, shift left, involve everyone in the organisation and then it does become a cultural movement. There is still a place for specialisation, but good specialists know how to work in loosely coupled way yet, function in an interdependent world. So,to summarise. its about the people, processes and technology and these things combined make it cultural.