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Who-like I-was frustrated with how our company manifested 'Devops', and also-like I-had zero interest in trying to play the 'hearts and minds' game of undergoin

by vanusa 5y ago

Who-like I-was frustrated with how our company manifested 'Devops', and also-like I-had zero interest in trying to play the 'hearts and minds' game of undergoing a devops transformation This sounds juicy. More details, please.

dvtrn 5y ago
Sure. I'm a Senior SRE, started off my tech career (21 years ago) on a help desk at a law firm, worked up to where I am now through various startups, roles, promotions. It's been my own personal observation in other tech communities when a Devops practitioner or Site Reliability Engineer is bemoaning some of the more common antipatterns[1] that manifest when companies decide "We're Devops now", the popular responses are some variation of "be the change you want to see". The person doing the venting is often encouraged to seek out ways of slowly winning 'hearts and minds' to adopting better practices, implementing better processes that more closely align with the ideal state of Devops and Site Reliability Engineering, take on the additional work of being the guiding hand for your organization to help them become the kind of Devops that actually practices Devops versus merely pretending. Sorry but... bollocks. At least for me. I've been down that road, done that work, it's exhausting, it's painful, it's gotten me fired, and its made me want to quit the industry entirely. I've taken less pay to join teams that were more self-aware about who they are, the challenges they had and what works for them and that's far more ideal than trying to slowly convert a business from (for a lack of a better phrase) pretend Devops to practiced devops. Hope that clarifies what I mean, then, when I say 'I have zero interest in doing the hearts and minds thing'. --- [1] https://www.devopsgroup.com/blog/twelve-devops-anti-patterns/ https://www.devopsgroup.com/blog/twelve-devops-anti-patterns...
- vanusa 5y ago
  So would you say DevOps is ... more a "brand" than useful proscription for anything? Or what are its useful / redeeming features, in your view? Don't mean to be dismissive, I'm still trying to figure out what it is, actually. In reality, as opposed to the stuff people like to hear themselves say about it.
  - dvtrn 5y ago
    Good question. Had to sit here and think about how I wanted to answer that one. Proscriptively? Probably. Inherently, not as much, but maybe. What I mean is, in some cases it probably is just a ‘brand’ in that I’ve just had too many experiences with companies that hired “DevOps Engineers” due to a lack of hiring discipline to actually bring in a SME for a critical component. This is how I think some Devops practitioners end up getting shit “thrown over the wall” and probably lies at the root of what they’re complaining about. So yeah I would say Devops is probably more of a brand than a transformational way of delivering software for SOME companies. These are the “pretenders” IMO. To your other question, what are redeeming features? Also a good question. One in fact. . . that forces me to really sit down and think about. I haven’t ever thought about the question of “what’s redeeming about Devops” as a Devops practitioner.
    - vanusa 5y ago
      Thanks - that echoes a lot of what I'd been quietly suspecting. I just didn't have heart to raise the issue with the resident 'DevOps Evangelist' a certain place I worked at recently.

by vanusa 5y ago

dvtrn 5y ago

Sure. I'm a Senior SRE, started off my tech career (21 years ago) on a help desk at a law firm, worked up to where I am now through various startups, roles, promotions. It's been my own personal observation in other tech communities when a Devops practitioner or Site Reliability Engineer is bemoaning some of the more common antipatterns[1] that manifest when companies decide "We're Devops now", the popular responses are some variation of "be the change you want to see". The person doing the venting is often encouraged to seek out ways of slowly winning 'hearts and minds' to adopting better practices, implementing better processes that more closely align with the ideal state of Devops and Site Reliability Engineering, take on the additional work of being the guiding hand for your organization to help them become the kind of Devops that actually practices Devops versus merely pretending. Sorry but... bollocks. At least for me. I've been down that road, done that work, it's exhausting, it's painful, it's gotten me fired, and its made me want to quit the industry entirely. I've taken less pay to join teams that were more self-aware about who they are, the challenges they had and what works for them and that's far more ideal than trying to slowly convert a business from (for a lack of a better phrase) pretend Devops to practiced devops. Hope that clarifies what I mean, then, when I say 'I have zero interest in doing the hearts and minds thing'. --- [1] https://www.devopsgroup.com/blog/twelve-devops-anti-patterns/ https://www.devopsgroup.com/blog/twelve-devops-anti-patterns...

vanusa 5y ago
So would you say DevOps is ... more a "brand" than useful proscription for anything? Or what are its useful / redeeming features, in your view? Don't mean to be dismissive, I'm still trying to figure out what it is, actually. In reality, as opposed to the stuff people like to hear themselves say about it.
- dvtrn 5y ago
  Good question. Had to sit here and think about how I wanted to answer that one. Proscriptively? Probably. Inherently, not as much, but maybe. What I mean is, in some cases it probably is just a ‘brand’ in that I’ve just had too many experiences with companies that hired “DevOps Engineers” due to a lack of hiring discipline to actually bring in a SME for a critical component. This is how I think some Devops practitioners end up getting shit “thrown over the wall” and probably lies at the root of what they’re complaining about. So yeah I would say Devops is probably more of a brand than a transformational way of delivering software for SOME companies. These are the “pretenders” IMO. To your other question, what are redeeming features? Also a good question. One in fact. . . that forces me to really sit down and think about. I haven’t ever thought about the question of “what’s redeeming about Devops” as a Devops practitioner.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    Thanks - that echoes a lot of what I'd been quietly suspecting. I just didn't have heart to raise the issue with the resident 'DevOps Evangelist' a certain place I worked at recently.