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> a way for devs and sysadmins to talk about deploys together My take on this as someone who has 14 years of dev and 7 years of ops experience: DevOps is a fla

> a way for devs and sysadmins to talk about deploys together My take on this as someone who has 14 years of dev and 7 years of ops experience: DevOps is a flawed concept. The problem never was the lack of communication between the devs and sysadmins, it’s just a symptom. The root cause is that the management puts pressure on the devs to innovate and deliver as fast as possible, and puts pressure on the ops to ensure that the system is stable, reliable, scalable, it has a 99.95% uptime and any issues will be solved by the on-call. So these two groups have conflicting interests and when this leads to conflicts and arguments the conclusion is that they just don’t want to collaborate/communicate. There are many departments at a company that have conflicting interests and can interfere with each other. If DevOps was a real thing there would be a need for LegalOps, DevSales, DevProduct, HROps, etc..

fragmede 2y ago
Paralegals, legal clerks; sales engineers; product management, project management, TPMs; HR coordinator, HR administrative assistant... I'm not sure your examples say we don't need DevOps!
- zsoltkacsandi 2y ago
  > Paralegals, legal clerks; sales engineers; product management, project management, TPMs; HR coordinator, HR administrative assistant The point wasn't that there are multiple job titles in different fields. > I'm not sure your examples say we don't need DevOps! The main assumption of DevOps is that the friction between developers and operations is the main cause of slow delivery. Well this friction can be happen between dev and legal, and dev and sales, and dev and product, and ops and product, and ops and sales, and ops and finance, etc. The companies that need DevOps have a much deeply rooted problem: the lack of collaboration between any department (not just dev and ops). Therefore DevOps won’t solve their problems. And companies that don’t have this problem won’t need DevOps, because they don’t have problems with collaboration.
solatic 2y ago
> DevOps is a flawed concept... conflicting interests... the conclusion is that they just don't want to collaborate/communicate. Wrong! This tendency is exactly what DevOps explains is the natural state of affairs without DevOps principles. The solution that DevOps advocates for is that such conflicting interests must not be expressed in meetings (where the culture conflict ensures they will get nowhere) but rather expressed in code. Infrastructure must be in code, deploys must be in code, testing must be in code, builds must be in code, policy must be in code, and the implicit pipeline with all the handoffs between teams connecting them all must also be in code. This makes everything fast (at least in comparison to manual processes), and makes everything explicit (in code) so that people can reach outside of their natural organizational silos to propose changes elsewhere in the pipeline, i.e. infra-focused engineers can add failing tests to prove the existence of a bug, developers can add infra that they need, QA can increase infra resources to ensure that sufficient resources are available for expected scale. The problem most organizations have is that they're not actually willing to force everyone's concerns to be written in code, and people are forbidden from reaching outside their silos. Usually this is due to poor hiring and training practice, e.g. "QA doesn't know how to write code" or "we can't let developers touch security policy". Sometimes it is due to leadership itself misunderstanding DevOps ("developers are forbidden from touching production"). > If DevOps was a real thing there would be a need for LegalOps, DevSales, DevProduct, HROps, etc. There is such a need, and it is generally being fulfilled by the systems in place. Small example - HROps would be ensuring that changes in the organization (i.e. people moving teams) accurately results in proper loss (of old) and gain (in new) privileges. This is done with integration between HR systems (the system of record as to who reports to whom and what their responsibilities are) and Active Directory or Google Workspace / Google Groups ensuring that people are automatically moved between the groups to which permissions are granted.
- zsoltkacsandi 2y ago
  > Wrong! This tendency is exactly what DevOps explains is the natural state of affairs without DevOps principles. The solution that DevOps advocates for is that such conflicting interests must not be expressed in meetings (where the culture conflict ensures they will get nowhere) but rather expressed in code. Yes, there is the theory, principles, advocates, etc, etc. And there is the reality, and based on many-many years of experience as a dev, as an ops, and as a manager at from small-sized to enterprise companies, the reality isn't even close to this. > Infrastructure must be in code, deploys must be in code, testing must be in code, builds must be in code, policy must be in code, and the implicit pipeline with all the handoffs between teams connecting them all must also be in code. This is not DevOps, and you don't need DevOps for this. This is just about having an engineering mindset. > so that people can reach outside of their natural organizational silos to propose changes elsewhere in the pipeline Do you know how many times have I seen a developer touching Terraform code, ansible playbooks, or pipelines described as code? I am not saying that it never happened, but it was a rare occasion. > The problem most organizations have is that they're not actually willing to force everyone's concerns to be written in code I managed such an enforcement and change. It did not solve the cultural and collaboration issues. > HROps would be ensuring that changes in the organization (i.e. people moving teams) accurately results in proper loss This is just a matter of SoPs and workflows. It has nothing to do with the topic. No offense, but your comment is a perfect reflection of why DevOps is a flawed concept. You are talking about enforcement of everything described as code, advocates, principles, etc. If there is a good culture and collaboration the infrastructure as code, the advocates, etc will come naturally. People will find a way to collaborate. But not the other way around, these won't fix the culture.

fragmede 2y ago

Paralegals, legal clerks; sales engineers; product management, project management, TPMs; HR coordinator, HR administrative assistant... I'm not sure your examples say we don't need DevOps!

zsoltkacsandi 2y ago
> Paralegals, legal clerks; sales engineers; product management, project management, TPMs; HR coordinator, HR administrative assistant The point wasn't that there are multiple job titles in different fields. > I'm not sure your examples say we don't need DevOps! The main assumption of DevOps is that the friction between developers and operations is the main cause of slow delivery. Well this friction can be happen between dev and legal, and dev and sales, and dev and product, and ops and product, and ops and sales, and ops and finance, etc. The companies that need DevOps have a much deeply rooted problem: the lack of collaboration between any department (not just dev and ops). Therefore DevOps won’t solve their problems. And companies that don’t have this problem won’t need DevOps, because they don’t have problems with collaboration.

solatic 2y ago

> DevOps is a flawed concept... conflicting interests... the conclusion is that they just don't want to collaborate/communicate. Wrong! This tendency is exactly what DevOps explains is the natural state of affairs without DevOps principles. The solution that DevOps advocates for is that such conflicting interests must not be expressed in meetings (where the culture conflict ensures they will get nowhere) but rather expressed in code. Infrastructure must be in code, deploys must be in code, testing must be in code, builds must be in code, policy must be in code, and the implicit pipeline with all the handoffs between teams connecting them all must also be in code. This makes everything fast (at least in comparison to manual processes), and makes everything explicit (in code) so that people can reach outside of their natural organizational silos to propose changes elsewhere in the pipeline, i.e. infra-focused engineers can add failing tests to prove the existence of a bug, developers can add infra that they need, QA can increase infra resources to ensure that sufficient resources are available for expected scale. The problem most organizations have is that they're not actually willing to force everyone's concerns to be written in code, and people are forbidden from reaching outside their silos. Usually this is due to poor hiring and training practice, e.g. "QA doesn't know how to write code" or "we can't let developers touch security policy". Sometimes it is due to leadership itself misunderstanding DevOps ("developers are forbidden from touching production"). > If DevOps was a real thing there would be a need for LegalOps, DevSales, DevProduct, HROps, etc. There is such a need, and it is generally being fulfilled by the systems in place. Small example - HROps would be ensuring that changes in the organization (i.e. people moving teams) accurately results in proper loss (of old) and gain (in new) privileges. This is done with integration between HR systems (the system of record as to who reports to whom and what their responsibilities are) and Active Directory or Google Workspace / Google Groups ensuring that people are automatically moved between the groups to which permissions are granted.

zsoltkacsandi 2y ago
> Wrong! This tendency is exactly what DevOps explains is the natural state of affairs without DevOps principles. The solution that DevOps advocates for is that such conflicting interests must not be expressed in meetings (where the culture conflict ensures they will get nowhere) but rather expressed in code. Yes, there is the theory, principles, advocates, etc, etc. And there is the reality, and based on many-many years of experience as a dev, as an ops, and as a manager at from small-sized to enterprise companies, the reality isn't even close to this. > Infrastructure must be in code, deploys must be in code, testing must be in code, builds must be in code, policy must be in code, and the implicit pipeline with all the handoffs between teams connecting them all must also be in code. This is not DevOps, and you don't need DevOps for this. This is just about having an engineering mindset. > so that people can reach outside of their natural organizational silos to propose changes elsewhere in the pipeline Do you know how many times have I seen a developer touching Terraform code, ansible playbooks, or pipelines described as code? I am not saying that it never happened, but it was a rare occasion. > The problem most organizations have is that they're not actually willing to force everyone's concerns to be written in code I managed such an enforcement and change. It did not solve the cultural and collaboration issues. > HROps would be ensuring that changes in the organization (i.e. people moving teams) accurately results in proper loss This is just a matter of SoPs and workflows. It has nothing to do with the topic. No offense, but your comment is a perfect reflection of why DevOps is a flawed concept. You are talking about enforcement of everything described as code, advocates, principles, etc. If there is a good culture and collaboration the infrastructure as code, the advocates, etc will come naturally. People will find a way to collaborate. But not the other way around, these won't fix the culture.