4 ms·

Ops people are cost centers. They can display their wizardry in blog posts until they are blue in the face, but except for those few companies with an incredibl

Ops people are cost centers. They can display their wizardry in blog posts until they are blue in the face, but except for those few companies with an incredibly large moat whose main profit is just raw traffic or high uptime (and how many companies like that can maintain that moat indefinitely anyway), engineers not actually building or directly improving product will always be cost centers. It brings me no joy to say this, as ops people tend to be very smart and cool under pressure, but I never see myself becoming one. High quality software and airtight system integrity seems decreasingly important to people paying salaries and investing money. And the world moves on. I refuse to be seen as a cost center if I can avoid it, and I don't have much sympathy left for otherwise very smart tech people who haven't figured this out yet. If you love the job, do it. If not, transition and don't complain. The people in charge are not going to be persuaded by blog rhetoric. I said what I said.

loa_in_ 2y ago
That's a heap of tough love. Ultimately indeed, those who pay, decide, and they're taught to systematically cut costs to improve short term profit above all else.
sgarland 2y ago
I’m not scared. We’ve seen the rise of DBRE because all of the ZIRP startups (the ones who survived, anyway) realized they couldn’t just YOLO their way through indefinitely, and that RDBMS is hard, actually. Of course, they couldn’t admit that they needed DBAs, so they invented a title and mixed in SRE so it would seem cool. I might be in a cost center, but companies will cut this cost center to their own demise.
nunez 2y ago
Sucks, but true. Which is extremely unfortunate. Bad software is expensive to maintain, bad ops can take down companies, and both can slow the sales cycle and threaten renewals. Engineering as a whole should be treated as a profit center.
telotortium 2y ago
Even as a Google SRE who came in with a Systems Engineering focus (i.e., sysadmin), I found it useful to qualify for, and become, a SRE-SWE so that I could also add Software Engineer to my résumé (I wrote enough code that I should get that title). Big and scaling companies still find the combination of sysadmin and software engineering skills extremely valuable, but you do need to emphasize that you are a skilled software engineer as well.

loa_in_ 2y ago

That's a heap of tough love. Ultimately indeed, those who pay, decide, and they're taught to systematically cut costs to improve short term profit above all else.

sgarland 2y ago

I’m not scared. We’ve seen the rise of DBRE because all of the ZIRP startups (the ones who survived, anyway) realized they couldn’t just YOLO their way through indefinitely, and that RDBMS is hard, actually. Of course, they couldn’t admit that they needed DBAs, so they invented a title and mixed in SRE so it would seem cool. I might be in a cost center, but companies will cut this cost center to their own demise.

nunez 2y ago

Sucks, but true. Which is extremely unfortunate. Bad software is expensive to maintain, bad ops can take down companies, and both can slow the sales cycle and threaten renewals. Engineering as a whole should be treated as a profit center.

telotortium 2y ago

Even as a Google SRE who came in with a Systems Engineering focus (i.e., sysadmin), I found it useful to qualify for, and become, a SRE-SWE so that I could also add Software Engineer to my résumé (I wrote enough code that I should get that title). Big and scaling companies still find the combination of sysadmin and software engineering skills extremely valuable, but you do need to emphasize that you are a skilled software engineer as well.