Generally I’ve seen a big difference in engineering output between those who see their system as a product, with users, and as a reflection of themselves in its

Generally I’ve seen a big difference in engineering output between those who see their system as a product, with users, and as a reflection of themselves in its ability to perform well, including under load and at scale, vs those who see it as a challenge to product a program that does X. The product builders tend to understand that no matter how smart the implementation, not functioning means it all counts for nothing. At the end of the day it has to run, and the ops matters. This means those product oriented engineers build systems that actually scale and perform their purpose well. It’s a spectrum, not binary. But to a large extent stops it being heavy when performance and availability are seen as worthy features. And at some point in every org the engineers who keep things running are valued because it’s actually challenging to keep things running, and things running powers the business. Over any significant timeline Ops always matters.