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I get where the author is coming from. The meaning of "DevOps" is in the name - it stems from a culture of encouraging _devs_ to do _ops_, and rejecting the ant
by chatmasta 4y ago
I get where the author is coming from. The meaning of "DevOps" is in the name - it stems from a culture of encouraging _devs_ to do _ops_, and rejecting the antiquated separation between developers who write the code and the sys-admins who deploy the code.
The term "DevOps" doesn't need retiring, but "DevOps Engineer" does. DevOps is a culture and a practice that allows developers to iterate quickly by taking ownership of the operations of the software they build. Every engineer is a DevOps engineer. But such a widespread diffusion of responsibilities doesn't mean the specialists suddenly disappear. It's not like every dev knows how to configure a new multi-region cluster with automated failover. Instead, they know how to use whatever platform they've been empowered with to help them manage such operations.
For this reason, I think "Platform Engineer" is a better word than "DevOps Engineer" for describing the differentiated specialization of this role. Every developer in an organization engages in "DevOps" on a regular basis, whenever they debug a CI pipeline or deploy a new service. But someone needs to build, setup and maintain all the tooling to enable those _devs_ to do _ops_. In my mind, that's the specialized role of a Platform Engineer.
- kqr 4y agoBut DevOps does not mean "devs" doing "ops"! I feel like I'm repeating myself now, but devops is a culture promoting lean-inspired practises to reduce batch size and increase cadence. Go back to the original clique of people who started talking about devops and that was what they were discussing. I can absolutely see how the name "devops" is confusing and easily lead to the sort of misunderstanding your comment propagates. I don't know why they picked that name. Maybe it was about applying concepts from operations research and business operations into development -- who knows. Either way, the way I read your comment, it is more proof that the name is misleading and should be retired.