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How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

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Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#21

Post by paulbjensen »

This article pretty much resonates with my experience, except that my employer (a 4 person established company) can't afford to hire a QA and sysadmin alongside my role as developer.

The bad side is that doing this DevOps role across multiple projects at the same time can lead to burnout, and I think I came close to that in the last few months.

The good side is that I've learnt a great deal about how to architect and deploy distributed web systems, how to do end-to-end testing, and how to effectively run the ops side of the business.

It's a mixed bag, and the burnout is the worst aspect of it, as well as the case where people are forced into situations where they are way in over their head.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#22

Post by ltcoleman »

From my point of view, this is due to lack of tech education. There just are not enough people graduating/learning the technical skills necessary for medium to large size software companies to employ.

I am a manager/developer/architect at a relatively large software company, and we have to task our developers with devops-type tasks constantly. Not because we want our developers spending time outside of coding, but because for lack of ability to hire the competency needed.

As you stated, good developers can generally perform these tasks so when you have nobody lower to perform them they become a weight on the developers' shoulders.

No it isn't necessarily fair, and yes, I believe in the future specialization will come back as the education system starts to realize there are many jobs in tech, not just a Comp Sci degree jobs.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#24

Post by jimmaswell »

clone1018 wrote: post #4

"If you are a developer of moderately sized software, you need a deployment system in place. Quick, what are the benefits and drawbacks of the following such systems: Puppet, Chef, Salt, Ansible, Vagrant, Docker. Now implement your deployment solution! Did you even realize which systems had no business being in that list?" I'm not understanding this, you can deploy with Puppet, Chef, Salt, Ansible, Vagrant and Docker…

I hope I'm not actually expected to know what any of those is.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#25

Post by angersock »

maratd wrote: post #3

The market is maturing. Take a look at a market that is similarly structured. Look at construction. You have general contractors and then you have subs that work under them. A general contractor is a jack of all trades, master of none. Exactly what a full stack developer is. This isn't the end of specialization. It's the beginning of project management steered by developers who intimately understand all of the work i…

Having a full-stack developer as the head on a project, with specialists on the team, is a great idea.

In practice, though, it seems like the minimum bar for entry becomes "full-stack experience" and then understaffing, because why bother hiring when these people can do everything anyways?

That's how the HR and operations folks screw it up.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#26

Post by forgottenpass »

maratd wrote: post #3

The market is maturing. Take a look at a market that is similarly structured. Look at construction. You have general contractors and then you have subs that work under them. A general contractor is a jack of all trades, master of none. Exactly what a full stack developer is. This isn't the end of specialization. It's the beginning of project management steered by developers who intimately understand all of the work i…

You're describing a software lead, not devops.

A software lead is one a type generalist, as they have to manage resources that can X, Y and Z. The generalist position described in this article is someone who can and will dive in and do X, Y and Z themselves. Very different roles.

It's the beginning of project management steered by developers who intimately understand all of the work involved, even if they aren't as competent as the specialists.

People with a wide breadth of general development knowledge, once employed as developers but now managing development? I wouldn't exactly call that a new idea. Or are you talking management that also develops across all components of the software? If management takes up so little time of a single developer's time, then you're just using different words to describe the small team constraints that the article does.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#27

Post by pnathan »

This article is pretty ignorant.

I don't think most developers have the capability to be sysadmins or QA. Vice versa, too, quite often. Joe developer ain't that special.

Devops is about taking moving the infrastructure into its own configuration-managed artifact, taking lessons from programming and computer science, and coming out with its own engineering rigor.

If you want your devs to operate builds/infrastructure/etc/etc, that's fine, but devops that ain't. That's called "many hats".

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#28

Post by thenmar »

maratd wrote: post #3

The market is maturing. Take a look at a market that is similarly structured. Look at construction. You have general contractors and then you have subs that work under them. A general contractor is a jack of all trades, master of none. Exactly what a full stack developer is. This isn't the end of specialization. It's the beginning of project management steered by developers who intimately understand all of the work i…

I don't think this is the best analogy. Understanding a "full stack" isn't so you can manage specialists, it's necessary to _be_ a specialist so you can build something that you know doesn't have an obviously inherent pitfall. It's so you can prototype something without needing the time and attention of another specialist.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#29

Post by ryanburk »

mrweasel wrote: post #8
chronid wrote: post #2

I don't really think a good developer can replace a good sysadmin. The reverse is true too, this is not a flamebait! :P I don't see "DevOps" as a way to replace some roles - but as a way to make everyone work better together. Instead of living each in their own bubble (and in my - pretty limited I admit - experience it always) everyone has to know, at least a little, what someone else does. It really helps everyone a…

It really helpful to have developers know at least a little systems administration, and vice versa. When doing web development at least there's a fair number of problems that you should just let a web server, caching server, database server or even the operation system handle for you. If developers no nothing about systems administration they sometimes solve non-problems. I'm just a guilty as anyone else in try to wr…

this is pretty much spot on. when you have strict separation of dev & "ops", you get what I would argue is bad service+stack design and wasted resources.

"devops" is having developers sitting with, understanding, architecting, and in the end programming solutions to what were traditionally ops/sysadmin problems. and operators sitting with, understanding and participating in service architecture, teaching about livesite realities, coding where possible, and appropriately buffering devs from noise on the livesite.

the unfortunate thing is that many companies swing the pendulum too far one way or the other. neither all devs nor traditional dev + IT/ops orgs are the best way to build a great product and run a world class service.

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