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I moved from full stack eng to SRE/DevOps a couple of years ago but have the least enjoyable role of straddling the two. And while I think this post surfaces so

I moved from full stack eng to SRE/DevOps a couple of years ago but have the least enjoyable role of straddling the two. And while I think this post surfaces some good points I can tell you that deep in the heart of every SRE/DevOps engineer that didn't come from a software dev background -- all they truly want is to get paid 250K a year to administer a system that literally does nothing and thus never breaks and this desire is the subtext to and informs every interaction they have with the engineering team.

slyall 4y ago
and every dev just wants to get paid $250k/year to write some code that solves the problem on their machine, hit deploy, close their laptop and go home. Random stereotypes might be funny but they are not useful in getting stuff done.
- kubectl_h 4y ago
  > and every dev Friend, I have a whole laundry list of issues I have with devs, but this post isn't "things devs want from devops". > Random stereotypes might be funny but they are not useful in getting stuff done. You say "stereotype"... I say cynicism, which is ultimately what qualified me for the SRE role.
- lmm 4y ago
  On the contrary, knowing what everyone's incentives are is a big help. Although in my experience most devs would rather see their code all the way to production; the problem is their line manager wants them to tick off the ticket and move on to the next one as early as possible.
davewritescode 4y ago
I personally think you it’s very difficult be an SRE who doesn’t come from a software engineering background. To me an SRE needs to come from a background that includes extensive coding and architecture experience. To me, the worst SREs are the folks who come from the DevOps side whose experience is limited to pipelines and infrastructure as code type stuff. They invent solutions that just don’t work.
- TurboHaskal 4y ago
  This is why I do programming tests before hiring SRE/DevOps for our team. I don’t really care how well you know Ansible or Kubernetes, or how long you’ve been operating software components. If you can’t think like a software engineer you can search a job somewhere else. In my experience DevOps coming from a sysadmin background end up poisoning the well. They’re afraid of developing the right kind of abstractions, block any proposals to do these and before you blink you end up with a mediocre VendorOps team that can do nothing but integrate off the shelf solutions with an unmaintainable mess of yaml / hcl “code”. They will replicate, the more capable DevOps engineers will leave in frustration and your platform will be taken hostage. Don’t let a single one in.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    Yes I’ve been in three places like that now that demand coding skills of their “devops/sre” candidates then proceed to saddle them with ton of ops and resist any new software from being written (the “no software is best software” crowd). Then people are wondering why they have to pay $$$ for these roles because “all they do is apply some terraform” lol Fwiw I completely agree with your second paragraph and seen it first hand in last couple gigs but I dont think ICs are to blame here - fish usually rots from head down.

slyall 4y ago

and every dev just wants to get paid $250k/year to write some code that solves the problem on their machine, hit deploy, close their laptop and go home. Random stereotypes might be funny but they are not useful in getting stuff done.

kubectl_h 4y ago
> and every dev Friend, I have a whole laundry list of issues I have with devs, but this post isn't "things devs want from devops". > Random stereotypes might be funny but they are not useful in getting stuff done. You say "stereotype"... I say cynicism, which is ultimately what qualified me for the SRE role.
lmm 4y ago
On the contrary, knowing what everyone's incentives are is a big help. Although in my experience most devs would rather see their code all the way to production; the problem is their line manager wants them to tick off the ticket and move on to the next one as early as possible.

davewritescode 4y ago

I personally think you it’s very difficult be an SRE who doesn’t come from a software engineering background. To me an SRE needs to come from a background that includes extensive coding and architecture experience. To me, the worst SREs are the folks who come from the DevOps side whose experience is limited to pipelines and infrastructure as code type stuff. They invent solutions that just don’t work.

TurboHaskal 4y ago
This is why I do programming tests before hiring SRE/DevOps for our team. I don’t really care how well you know Ansible or Kubernetes, or how long you’ve been operating software components. If you can’t think like a software engineer you can search a job somewhere else. In my experience DevOps coming from a sysadmin background end up poisoning the well. They’re afraid of developing the right kind of abstractions, block any proposals to do these and before you blink you end up with a mediocre VendorOps team that can do nothing but integrate off the shelf solutions with an unmaintainable mess of yaml / hcl “code”. They will replicate, the more capable DevOps engineers will leave in frustration and your platform will be taken hostage. Don’t let a single one in.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  Yes I’ve been in three places like that now that demand coding skills of their “devops/sre” candidates then proceed to saddle them with ton of ops and resist any new software from being written (the “no software is best software” crowd). Then people are wondering why they have to pay $$$ for these roles because “all they do is apply some terraform” lol Fwiw I completely agree with your second paragraph and seen it first hand in last couple gigs but I dont think ICs are to blame here - fish usually rots from head down.