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It is more nuanced. I care, but my skillset demands I spend more time on the Development side, so Operations must take the backseat in my mind because of this i

It is more nuanced. I care, but my skillset demands I spend more time on the Development side, so Operations must take the backseat in my mind because of this incentive structure. Asking one person to do two (actually three) job functions is a scam. Most developers have to do Frontend, Backend, and Ops. These have wildly different mindsets and feedback loops and not enough time exists. Don't hate the player, hate the game. The orgs are fucked, not the workers.

makestuff 4y ago
It is like your doctor being the anesthesiologist, the recovery room nurse, and the surgeon all at once.
- hbarka 4y ago
  Bad analogy. How about your mom asking you to help wash the dishes and take out the garbage?
  - wruza 4y ago
    She doesn't impose multiple business-critical schedules on that, so you can just wash them, pick your nose for a while, take out the garbage and go play games. There is nothing wrong with doing related jobs solo when situation allows, but this example is also far from learning and using "modern" full-stack of stacks or doing surgeries.
  - makestuff 4y ago
    Well I didn't have to get an education to do that and if I mess up washing the dishes I didn't cause a death in the case of a doctor or a multi million dollar outage in tech.
  - Smaug123 4y ago
    That is an extremely bad analogy. The purpose of chores is to spread the load onto an otherwise unproductive member of the household. (And to teach said household member how to do them.) Unless you're arguing that engineers are unproductive members of a company, I suppose.
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  Thank you, yes this is the perfect analogy. I think every developer should have some kind of baseline understanding of devops stuff. But it’s a whole field in and of itself, and is also innovating fairly rapidly. There are only so many hours in the day, it’s hard enough to stay on top of my core skill set.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  Race car driver vs bus driver. Race car driver knows how their car functions and works with engineers/mechanics on improvements. Bus driver don’t give a shit (no offense to bus driver). Decide which company you are - a race team or a bus line
  - Multicomp 4y ago
    I will extend this analogy to say I am a race car mechanic but I'm having to pick up how the driver drives the car in order to make the car perform better, with the eventual goal of being able to drive the car myself (ops -> devops -> dev) so I can do any of the above roles. Software devs who close their mind to the lower parts of the stack give me the opportunity to learn and do their jobs as well, becoming a more valuable employee as a result.
    - dilyevsky 4y ago
      > becoming a more valuable employee as a result. That’s iyho. The management of a bus line company doesn’t see it that way ;)
jayd16 4y ago
I think the argument is that calling ops different is like saying error handling is another department. To be a complete dev you must understand the code in situ regardless of your specialty.
lolinder 4y ago
> Asking one person to do two (actually three) job functions is a scam. The word "scam" is overused. It's a scam if it was a bait-and-switch. It's not a scam if it was advertised this way up front. In the latter case it's just a job whose description you don't like.
- lucasyvas 4y ago
  It is a scam. It should absolutely be assumed that you could perform these job functions - it makes you a way better engineer! But being expected to is a scam because the skill ceiling on each is so amazingly high that only a scam artist would expect someone to be able to perform all three to a specialist level. The same issue happened when QA departments got the boot. I deeply understand testing strategies (both manual and automated) but this is an important enough job that it deserves a dedicated person. Not having this person is exclusively because the business is trying to save money and make the worker easily replaceable. It is not better for the department members or the software itself. It is only good for the bottom line. Yes, if you know it all you'll be valued higher - but the company is still reaping the majority of that benefit from you and not rewarding you with 3 salaries. You should not perform all the roles because it's economically idiotic to do so. You could contract out all 3 services and make a shit ton more money than you would performing them in a salaried position. That is a scam.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    I perform all three roles for one company. I agreed to it upfront. I do it in less than 40 hours a week at a very respectable salary. I get maybe 1 after hours call a year for an Ops task. My boss knows that I won't do QA or Ops nearly as well as I do Dev, and he knows that QA and Ops time come out of Dev time (not personal time) and he's okay with that because that's the stage we're in. If you think that is a scam, I don't know what to tell you.
    - lucasyvas 4y ago
      I do. Ask for more money.

makestuff 4y ago

It is like your doctor being the anesthesiologist, the recovery room nurse, and the surgeon all at once.

hbarka 4y ago
Bad analogy. How about your mom asking you to help wash the dishes and take out the garbage?
- wruza 4y ago
  She doesn't impose multiple business-critical schedules on that, so you can just wash them, pick your nose for a while, take out the garbage and go play games. There is nothing wrong with doing related jobs solo when situation allows, but this example is also far from learning and using "modern" full-stack of stacks or doing surgeries.
- makestuff 4y ago
  Well I didn't have to get an education to do that and if I mess up washing the dishes I didn't cause a death in the case of a doctor or a multi million dollar outage in tech.
- Smaug123 4y ago
  That is an extremely bad analogy. The purpose of chores is to spread the load onto an otherwise unproductive member of the household. (And to teach said household member how to do them.) Unless you're arguing that engineers are unproductive members of a company, I suppose.
danielvaughn 4y ago
Thank you, yes this is the perfect analogy. I think every developer should have some kind of baseline understanding of devops stuff. But it’s a whole field in and of itself, and is also innovating fairly rapidly. There are only so many hours in the day, it’s hard enough to stay on top of my core skill set.
dilyevsky 4y ago
Race car driver vs bus driver. Race car driver knows how their car functions and works with engineers/mechanics on improvements. Bus driver don’t give a shit (no offense to bus driver). Decide which company you are - a race team or a bus line
- Multicomp 4y ago
  I will extend this analogy to say I am a race car mechanic but I'm having to pick up how the driver drives the car in order to make the car perform better, with the eventual goal of being able to drive the car myself (ops -> devops -> dev) so I can do any of the above roles. Software devs who close their mind to the lower parts of the stack give me the opportunity to learn and do their jobs as well, becoming a more valuable employee as a result.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    > becoming a more valuable employee as a result. That’s iyho. The management of a bus line company doesn’t see it that way ;)

jayd16 4y ago

I think the argument is that calling ops different is like saying error handling is another department. To be a complete dev you must understand the code in situ regardless of your specialty.

lolinder 4y ago

> Asking one person to do two (actually three) job functions is a scam. The word "scam" is overused. It's a scam if it was a bait-and-switch. It's not a scam if it was advertised this way up front. In the latter case it's just a job whose description you don't like.

lucasyvas 4y ago
It is a scam. It should absolutely be assumed that you could perform these job functions - it makes you a way better engineer! But being expected to is a scam because the skill ceiling on each is so amazingly high that only a scam artist would expect someone to be able to perform all three to a specialist level. The same issue happened when QA departments got the boot. I deeply understand testing strategies (both manual and automated) but this is an important enough job that it deserves a dedicated person. Not having this person is exclusively because the business is trying to save money and make the worker easily replaceable. It is not better for the department members or the software itself. It is only good for the bottom line. Yes, if you know it all you'll be valued higher - but the company is still reaping the majority of that benefit from you and not rewarding you with 3 salaries. You should not perform all the roles because it's economically idiotic to do so. You could contract out all 3 services and make a shit ton more money than you would performing them in a salaried position. That is a scam.
- lolinder 4y ago
  I perform all three roles for one company. I agreed to it upfront. I do it in less than 40 hours a week at a very respectable salary. I get maybe 1 after hours call a year for an Ops task. My boss knows that I won't do QA or Ops nearly as well as I do Dev, and he knows that QA and Ops time come out of Dev time (not personal time) and he's okay with that because that's the stage we're in. If you think that is a scam, I don't know what to tell you.
  - lucasyvas 4y ago
    I do. Ask for more money.