Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DevOps is a culture, not a role

dev.jlelse.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 139 posts

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#61

Post by beobab »

skywhopper wrote: post #58

First, let me say I totally agree with the premise here--that all parts of a software engineering organization need to be on board with DevOps, buying in to the vision, learning the full stack, taking responsibility. However, this article does serve as a good example of one of the big problems with most DevOps/SRE evangelism: It's usually coming from the Dev- perspective, rather than the -Ops perspective (or better,…

Speaking as someone who once had to patch up a legacy system, I appreciate items 1, 5, 8 and 10 far more than I did before.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#62

Post by mattmanser »

xorblurb wrote: post #53
mugsie wrote: post #48

Everywhere you see the word "devops" replace it with the word "empathy". That was the true meaning of DevOps - fostering empathy and communication between different groups, and to stop the siloed "throw code over the wall to Ops" mentality that existed. By having a "DevOp's Engineer" you have admitted you have failed at DevOps, because you have created a new silo. A good team will have a combination of Operations Eng…

That's like Agile; the practices that emerged after the principles are sometimes (often?) WTF.

It confuses me when I read the Agile Manifesto and then look at Scrum, Lean, Kanban, XP, etc.

On the one hand you have a manifesto advocating self-organising teams citing individuals over processes, while all those methodologies claim to be 'agile', but dictate your processes and how you should organise.

To me, they seem incompatible. It's like several of the original signatories have developed doublethink.

The one that really makes my mind boggle is that you can be a certified Scrum Master. To become the guy who tells everyone how to work? Is that not the very antithesis of the agile manifesto?

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#63

Post by toomuchtodo »

oogali wrote: post #43
mverwijs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the engineers that call themselves 'Devops'. It's the recruiters and managers. Every engineer that I know that holds the 'Devops' title hates it, but has no choice in it.

I've observed this, but it depends on experience level. Folks with <5 years experience, tend to enjoy the DevOps portion of their title. Whereas, neckbeards with a deep background tend to dislike it.

Confirmed! I am not a devops engineer. I am a systems/infrastructure engineer with a continuous integration/deployment skill set and experience.

But recruiters look for devops in my title. So, in the word goes. Hate the game, not the player.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#64

Post by kingkongjaffa »

ptero wrote: post #42
23david wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2017, there's literally _no_ difference between the outcomes expected from a "Systems Engineer" and a "DevOps Engineer" I don't find the title 'Systems Engineer' to be in widespread usage at tech startups in SV, so I'm not sure what to expect from one. To be honest, I would expect Systems Engineers to be working on hardware. The infrastructure automation work done at modern tech startups is best described by the…

"Systems Engineer" seems to be an overloaded term. In the area I work in (applied R&D, East coast) the role is a mix of the software architect and QA, but encompassing both hardware and software. Some science background (whichever science is relevant to the project) but mostly a lot of experience in general engineering practices (what generally works, how things break, what is sufficient to test to feel good that a u…

Again systems engineer can have more meanings still, when I hear systems engineering I think of interaction specification of mechanical / electrical systems particularly in automotive, rail, and aerospace.

managing actual physical systems, not software, although the skills are similar besides domain specific knowledge.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#65

Post by pvg »

mugsie wrote: post #48

Everywhere you see the word "devops" replace it with the word "empathy". That was the true meaning of DevOps - fostering empathy and communication between different groups, and to stop the siloed "throw code over the wall to Ops" mentality that existed. By having a "DevOp's Engineer" you have admitted you have failed at DevOps, because you have created a new silo. A good team will have a combination of Operations Eng…

Everywhere you see the word "devops" replace it with the word "empathy".

That's an interesting idea and might empower you to write truly heartfelt downtime explanations to your customers. I wonder if it could be broadened to replacing "Accounts Payable" and "Payroll" with "empathy".

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#66

Post by sanderjd »

dahart wrote: post #59
inopinatus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your disagreement. There's nothing we do under the umbrella of "DevOps" that wasn't part of competent service ownership twenty years ago. I read your article and the point that stood out for me was the notion that the skills to drive tools like chef, puppet are somehow new and different. But I know better, because although I use those tools today, back in the day we used cfengine and a bunch of declar…

You're talking about the difference between sysadmins of the 90s and devops of today. The comment you replied to was talking about the difference between product engineering and operations engineering -- he's defending the idea that devops is a specialization of engineering as a whole. It looks to me like you're right, and the comment you replied to is right, and you seem to be agreeing. He's not saying that chef and…

Right, but your parent is saying that job is not some new "DevOps" thing, it is just well functioning operations. "DevOps" is meant to evoke bi-directional buy-in and cooperation between the people working on development and the people working on operations. Re-naming the operations role "DevOps" doesn't get you that - you could still have low buy-in and poor cooperation between development and "DevOps".

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#67

Post by dahart »

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…

"DevOps Engineer" is simply a title.

And if it's the same job, to me it seems like a better title, less vague, more descriptive & accurate. Referring to "operations" seems to more clearly describe what it is that a DevOps or Systems engineer is doing, to me anyway, than the word "systems".

I'd speculate wildly that DevOps engineer is a title that web companies use, and system engineer is a title that non-web companies use for roughly the same job. But to me, for some reason, the two terms invoke images of pretty different day to day activities.

> for some reason Ops guys want to call themselves "DevOps Engineers" because they read The Phoenix Project

Are you saying that they don't deserve the title Engineer, and should be called "Ops guys" on the job application?

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#68

Post by sanderjd »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #33
user15672 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have the job title "DevOps X", then you've missed the point of DevOps. The entire thing was brought in to remove the silos between SysOps and Dev. If you have people in the "DevOps" role, then you've just created a new silo, which means you just have traditional SysOps with a new and fashionable, but less meaningful name.

Unfortunately, "Cultural Engineer" as a title has some pretty scary implications. So the DevOps Engineer is becoming a cultural engineer of the company with a better name. Which of course is title inflation and title overloading. Now if they'd just overload the salaries, we'd be set.

I've seen this a few times in the thread and I don't get it. Nobody is saying there is a "Cultural Engineer" role, they are saying that there are operations roles and development roles, and that DevOps is not a role, but a culture where the people in both roles understand, help, and cooperate with each other.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#69

Post by sanderjd »

psyc wrote: post #60
benjaminwootton wrote: post #2

Having worked on over 100 DevOps initiatives, I'm inclined to disagree. 8 years into DevOps, automation, cloud computing etc, it's time to accept that DevOps is a specialism and a function that companies - especially big ones - need to put into place in order to adopt the principles. See here for further thoughts - https://devops.com/im-happy-devops-engineer-job-title/

Completely agree. None of the current top comments even mention what DevOps actually does. I can't understand where the motivation is coming from to obscure it into some fuzzy "human" wankery.

It is actually the opposite. The whole thing started out as a movement to improve cooperation between development and operations ("fuzzy human wankery") and has been obscured to mean "an operations person who automates things", which didn't need a new name, because they already did that.

Re: DevOps is a culture, not a role

#70

Post by dahart »

sanderjd wrote: post #66
dahart wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about the difference between sysadmins of the 90s and devops of today. The comment you replied to was talking about the difference between product engineering and operations engineering -- he's defending the idea that devops is a specialization of engineering as a whole. It looks to me like you're right, and the comment you replied to is right, and you seem to be agreeing. He's not saying that chef and…

Right, but your parent is saying that job is not some new "DevOps" thing, it is just well functioning operations. "DevOps" is meant to evoke bi-directional buy-in and cooperation between the people working on development and the people working on operations. Re-naming the operations role "DevOps" doesn't get you that - you could still have low buy-in and poor cooperation between development and "DevOps".

I agree, and I agreed with that previous comment and the one before it. But I don't see where the comment I replied to made any reference to the name not doing what it says. I only see him saying that what we call DevOps existed before we called it that.

In any case, of course the name doesn't cause buy-in to happen, just like hiring an "Engineer" doesn't mean the person will do a good job engineering.

You're not saying that we should avoid a term meant to evoke the idea that cooperation is expected, because it might not happen, are you? I can only see rightness in trying to be clear about what's expected and naming roles to suggest positive cooperation is part of the job. If "DevOps" is meant to suggest buy-in and cooperation, you've convinced me that it's a better description than whatever it was called before.

Post reply on HN