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This article is very prescient. This is happening now and the pace is speeding up considerably. I work in healthcare and we hit a tipping point about a year a

This article is very prescient. This is happening now and the pace is speeding up considerably. I work in healthcare and we hit a tipping point about a year ago where HIE's and hospitals are now comfortable with their vendors going to AWS instead of insisting on on-premises infrastructure. In the last year, my company is basically turned on a dime and we no longer use virtually any of our on-premises hardware. If you are in IT (non-developer), you should be concerned.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
At the same time, as a software engineering manager, I would have given my left eye for a highly competent AWS DevOps engineer. It took months to find someone with the skills we were looking for.
- eropple 8y ago
  You might be an exception, but food for thought: the number one reason why my clients, when I was running a consulting business, couldn't find in-house DevOps folks was an unwillingness to pay. At best, most places would pay line engineer rates--the same thing they'd pay for a Java or a Rails developer--for a skillset that's significantly broader than most (certainly not all, but most) line engineers at a given level of seniority and is significantly more in-demand. In the Boston area as an example, I regularly saw companies trying to get senior devops engineers at rates more appropriate for mid-level, and principals for hilariously under rate. (We're talking $140K offers for a senior devops engineer when the next place would offer $180K, and $160K for principals who could get $220K elsewhere.) To be fair, this is sometimes trickier because a lot of "devops engineers" are actually mouse-driven system administrators, so the means and medians often look odd. That somebody who does what I do, and somebody primarily doing things hand-o-matically, would have the same job title throws a wrench into one-to-one comparisons. But you can figure it out.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

At the same time, as a software engineering manager, I would have given my left eye for a highly competent AWS DevOps engineer. It took months to find someone with the skills we were looking for.

eropple 8y ago
You might be an exception, but food for thought: the number one reason why my clients, when I was running a consulting business, couldn't find in-house DevOps folks was an unwillingness to pay. At best, most places would pay line engineer rates--the same thing they'd pay for a Java or a Rails developer--for a skillset that's significantly broader than most (certainly not all, but most) line engineers at a given level of seniority and is significantly more in-demand. In the Boston area as an example, I regularly saw companies trying to get senior devops engineers at rates more appropriate for mid-level, and principals for hilariously under rate. (We're talking $140K offers for a senior devops engineer when the next place would offer $180K, and $160K for principals who could get $220K elsewhere.) To be fair, this is sometimes trickier because a lot of "devops engineers" are actually mouse-driven system administrators, so the means and medians often look odd. That somebody who does what I do, and somebody primarily doing things hand-o-matically, would have the same job title throws a wrench into one-to-one comparisons. But you can figure it out.