Ask HN: I feel like the term DevOps is becoming inflationary

6 pointscbrgm3y ago7 comments

Normally I rarely write my own opinion on things but this just has to come out now. The other day I participated in a Cloud Meetup in my area, since ages again in even in-person. How could it be otherwise, many of the participants have a DevOps background. But the variations in job titles really amazed me.

I feel like the term DevOps is becoming inflationary. Sometimes I feel like many people forget what DevOps is all about. It is not a job title that you print on a business card, it is not a department within a company that you can create and then you have automatically established DevOps principles, no DevOps is a culture that must be lived.

In the two hours of the Meetup I got to know more of the xOps variations than I would have liked, including FinOps, GreenOps, SecOps and many more. Is this a trend to combine various areas with DevOps and invent new words? Where will this lead us, will every area that has contact points between development and operations now be given a new name? ComplianceOps, PeopleOps? I don't think they are doing themselves any favors.

7 comments

giantg23y ago

Honestly, when I hear DevOps I think 'oh great, this company wants me to do 2 jobs to save on headcount'. That's basically all my company treats it as. We see them combining multiple roles in other areas like this too.

On a side note, I did more work on the actual Ops side messing with config and stuff on the servers when I was a developer than I do as a DevOps 'Application Engineer' now.

lmarcos3y ago

> Honestly, when I hear DevOps I think 'oh great, this company wants me to do 2 jobs to save on headcount'.

Exactly my thoughts as well.

smt883y ago

Language changes. How does this harm you? This seems like gatekeeping.

DevOps also definitely is a role. Maybe you could call it "DevOps Support Engineer," the same way "QC is not a role" but we do have QC Engineers.

If your organization embraces DevOps, you're probably going to need code and configuration to enforce it, and some companies might want a dedicated expert to maintain that.

ericalexander03y ago

Distill down what DevOps is, and it's just the pursuit of customer value through a learning organization. It's name has changed, and will change, with fashion trends.

DevOps, SRE, doesn't matter. A name doesn't guarantee you're doing it right.

nittanymount3y ago

" It is not a job title that you print on a business card, ... no DevOps is a culture that must be lived."

not sure why you say it is not a job title, you can say it is a culture for sure, but devops engineer is a real job position, basically someone in the team takes care of the dev cycle process... in the context of a software company, it is different to other positions (product_owner, project_manager, developer, QA_engineer, designer.)

daviddever23box3y ago

There are some areas, bound by regulatory concerns, where a move-fast-break-things / continuous refinement approach DOES NOT and CANNOT work, i.e., HR and compliance.

potamic3y ago

Oh you poor little out of touch fossilized reptile. DevOps is an outmoded idea that is banished to the place where careers go to die. We are now Platform Engineers!

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