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

6 points by cbrgm 4 years ago | 7 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.

giantg2 4 years 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.

lmarcos 4 years 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.

smt88 4 years 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.

ericalexander0 4 years 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.

nittanymount 4 years 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.)

daviddever23box 4 years 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.

potamic 4 years 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!