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DevOps is a culture, not a role

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Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#21

Post by BaronSamedi »

shitloadofbooks wrote: post #14

"DevOps Engineer" is simply just title inflation. In 2017, there's literally _no_ difference between the outcomes expected from a "Systems Engineer" and a "DevOps Engineer" - both are expected to produce HA, Automated, Well Documented Infrastructure, to allow developers to run their code. Anyone not doing that is just a _bad_ "Systems Engineer" Developers don't call themselves "Agile Developers" because they started…

"the shared empathy which DevOps fosters". I haven't heard it described like this before but I like it a lot. The way you phrased it emphasizes the "put yourself in other people's shoes" philosophy. An attitude that I would argue is the key to a successful DevOps process.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#22

Post by robert_tweed »

I've seen two prevalent definitions of devops:

1. It's a culture where dev and ops work together (as per TFA);

2. It is the application of software engineering practises (such as version control and test automation) to ops.

I prefer the second definition because it's the only one that's got anything to do with new developments in infrastructure-as-code and isn't just a new name for what competent teams were always doing anyway.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#23

Post by notamy »

robert_tweed wrote: post #22

I've seen two prevalent definitions of devops: 1. It's a culture where dev and ops work together (as per TFA); 2. It is the application of software engineering practises (such as version control and test automation) to ops. I prefer the second definition because it's the only one that's got anything to do with new developments in infrastructure-as-code and isn't just a new name for what competent teams were always do…

Alternative third definition: Make the devs also be the ops guys

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#24

Post by np422 »

While I agree that DevOps needs to be a mindset/culture to be of any benefit beside ticking buzzwords checkboxes - but I really don't see any harm in giving someone a title containing the word DevOps.

Someone who can do the proselytism, take initiatives to drive the adaption and at the same time be the go to guy for the technical knowledge needed for any new processes/tools.

We all agree that the old waterfall inspired way of working when the developers work on their own, throws a bunch of new code down a hatch for the ops guys to deploy and they both blame the other team when something don't work is less than desirable.

Maybe there are some startups that have the devops mindset already from the beginning and a few old companies that can get there on there own, but I think many need some help to get there. Perhaps they could hire someone to get them started?

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#25

Post by devoply »

notamy wrote: post #23
robert_tweed wrote: post #22

I've seen two prevalent definitions of devops: 1. It's a culture where dev and ops work together (as per TFA); 2. It is the application of software engineering practises (such as version control and test automation) to ops. I prefer the second definition because it's the only one that's got anything to do with new developments in infrastructure-as-code and isn't just a new name for what competent teams were always do…

Alternative third definition: Make the devs also be the ops guys

you mean the ops guys. and yeah it's just an easy way to take nerds and make them do more stuff so you can save that extra 85-100k salary. More profit for the shareholders, what's not to love.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#26

Post by provl »

devoply wrote: post #25
notamy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative third definition: Make the devs also be the ops guys

you mean the ops guys. and yeah it's just an easy way to take nerds and make them do more stuff so you can save that extra 85-100k salary. More profit for the shareholders, what's not to love.

ok

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#27

Post by holydude »

dozzie wrote: post #19
holydude wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not superficial and they definitely change how you approach your environment. I have worked extensively with both CFEngine and Puppet and I can assure you that they have enough differences especially when you consider large heterogenous environments that in no way you can consider using one as a substitute for the other.

> I can assure you that [CFEngine and Puppet] have enough differences [...] that in no way you can consider using one as a substitute for the other. Like what?

memory footprint, performance,different "runtime" etc ?

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#28

Post by jasode »

I was thinkging about that Mike Dilworth quote: "DevOps is a culture, not a role! The whole company needs to be doing DevOps for it to work."

It's one of those kinds of statements that at first glance, looks really insightful and invites the head nodding up & down in agreement.

However, thinking about it some more, that type of quote can be applied to anything.

"Compliance is a culture not a role. Everyone from the CEO to the janitor should be aware of legal compliance. Having a compliance department is wrong."

"Security is a culture not a role. Every employee should create quality passwords and follow proper encryption procedures, ..."

"Marketing is a culture not a role...", "Design is a culture not a role...", "" etc, etc. Every employee should know/do everything. If you have a separate marketing team and design team, your company has failed.

Yes, I can see where one ideal of devops is to "break down silos" and therefore, having a set of programmers who specialize in that is "recreating the silo" which is a contradiction. On the other hand, I can see the opposite view: if a company wholeheartedly embraces "devops", they will acknowledge that by having a team that focuses on devops. If you're a Google paying a programmer like Jeff Dean $500k+ a year, you really don't want him working on Chef/Puppet scripts instead of Tensorflow research. At a more advanced level of skills above Ansible/Docker automation is the SRE (Site Reliabity Engineers) which has a lot of overlap[1] with Devops focused engineers.

A specialization in devops seems inevitable especially for larger companies that exceed 10 people. In short, I'm not sure why "devops" in particular has to rigidly adhere to Heinlein's "specialization is for insects".[2]

As for other comments saying it's "title inflation", I'm confused as to the source of that sentiment. The "devops engineer" doesn't seem like a glamorous tile similar to "I'm CEO, bitch"[3]. There are no "50 Shades of Grey" movies where the female lead gets weak at the knees at the mere mention of "devops programmer". The "sanitation engineer" euphemism of "garbageman" I understand as inflation but "devops engineer" seems like a sideways or neutral label. I'm mystified by the outrage over this programming label.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_reliability_engineering#D...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man

[3] https://www.google.com/search?q="i%27m+ceo%2C+bitch"

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#29

Post by yourapostasy »

notamy wrote: post #23
robert_tweed wrote: post #22

I've seen two prevalent definitions of devops: 1. It's a culture where dev and ops work together (as per TFA); 2. It is the application of software engineering practises (such as version control and test automation) to ops. I prefer the second definition because it's the only one that's got anything to do with new developments in infrastructure-as-code and isn't just a new name for what competent teams were always do…

Alternative third definition: Make the devs also be the ops guys

I've been on the sysadmin/ops end, trying to teach devs how to apply their software engineering to ops. It's not a short ramp, unfortunately; the various ops stacks now are as broad and deep as software development stacks. Worse yet, it is not Yet Another Imperative Programming Language for them to pick up. Even declarative configuration management systems embed a lot of hidden, assumed sysadmin/ops experience/skills that many devs don't arrive on the scene with, and in the vast majority of cases it was like training someone from scratch to become a sysadmin, and then start devops training. Add in cross-platform ops, and it gets more challenging. Add in enterprise demands and integration points, and it becomes a multi-year effort.

More unfortunately, it is also a long ramp up time to bring sysadmins who don't know programming up to speed on software development. I'd like to know what others are doing to quickly build a devops team if they are doing that, other than "find highly-skilled senior sysadmins who already know software development", because that's my go-to approach for the time being, as it is way faster to teach someone like that Ansible if they already use Chef, for example, than pick up sysadmins or devs and cross-train them into the other field.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#30

Post by Randgalt »

notamy wrote: post #23
robert_tweed wrote: post #22

I've seen two prevalent definitions of devops: 1. It's a culture where dev and ops work together (as per TFA); 2. It is the application of software engineering practises (such as version control and test automation) to ops. I prefer the second definition because it's the only one that's got anything to do with new developments in infrastructure-as-code and isn't just a new name for what competent teams were always do…

Alternative third definition: Make the devs also be the ops guys

I'm good at writing code, developing libraries, architecture, etc. I'm not very good at operations - mostly because I don't enjoy it and haven't spent much time applying it.

Not everyone is the pitcher, the catcher, the first baseman, etc. We specialize because that's how humans work best together. Everyone should not need to know how to do everything.

Developers must work with operations - of course. The way and the what developers build must be able to be deployed in an agile manner. But, that does not mean that developers must become operations engineers as well. Leave that to the specialists in that role.

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