To all the DevOps people, what are the pros and...
To all the DevOps people, what are the pros and cons of the DevOps role? I’m thinking about getting into it.
Solution:Jump to solution
the entire devops "class" as a whole stems from a need for folks who can maintain and build tooling for existing infrastructure
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Thread automatically created by ThugNasty - NastyThug in #🤔｜questions
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
more likely to run into 24/7 on-call
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Wth, a 24/7 on-call? Why?
Btw, I’m still trying to understand what exactly DevOps does?
At one of my jobs we didn’t even have a dedicated DevOps person, the SWE’s used to handle all the DevOps stuff
Solution
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
the entire devops "class" as a whole stems from a need for folks who can maintain and build tooling for existing infrastructure
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
if something dies at 3am, you dont' expect a 9-5 dev to fix it in a mature developer environment
i was in a few devops roles and its normal to have 24/7 on-call shifts
right, in some companies they either call that consolidation or immature
depends on how good your tooling and infra is
passive-yellow•4mo ago
How long are you on-call for? A week? 2 weeks? Longer?
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
depends on how mature your engineering org is
if you have a team of 8 each taking a week, you'll be oncall once every 2 months
if you have a team of 4 each taking a week you'll be on-call once every month
it's really not something you should be concerned about imo
devops is a great role
24/7 on call is just part of the job desc
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Any other Cons besides this one?
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
not much
linux env, python, go, cloud
lots of great skillsets
passive-yellow•4mo ago
How would you recommend I break into a DevOps role?
I’m not sure how to build a useful project to show I can do the DevOps job, I heard that DevOps like Cybersecurity doesn’t have many Junior roles?
I have a hard time understanding what some of these DevOps tools like Ansible, Artifactory, Maven, etc. even do cause I don’t use them.
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
a home lab is 💯 the best project
passive-yellow•4mo ago
I do use GitHub/GutHub tho
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
if you're building a home lab, you'll inevitably learn how to set up VLANs, networking, routing, switching
build one VM, and install docker
figure out how to install k8s
how to set up networking across applications
across applications per hosts, etc
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Is Kode Kloud or Udemy good for this?
It would be ideal to learn this in a step by step course for me
sensitive-blue•4mo ago
We have on-call at my FAANG for developers
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
right, thats why i mentioned either
cause on one hand, you want developers to right good code
and encourage them to write unbreakable code to avoid oncall
i know some companies have this philosophy especially faang
other companeis want to separate the two concerns
yeah kode kloud or acloud guru can work
sensitive-blue•4mo ago
Haha, my SDM asked the team member that had been on the team since it started to screw up our ops so that we could show improvement when we fixed it.
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Awesome!
Also, what are the Technical interviews like for DevOps? Do I still have to do data structures & algorithms tests like for SWE?
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
it's like 2 notches easier than typical SWE interviews
passive-yellow•4mo ago
So no DSA? What do they usually test you on?
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
it varies?
one time for chronosphere i wrote an "alerting" tool in golang
passive-yellow•4mo ago
So how do you prepare for DevOps interviews if you don’t know what they’ll ask you?
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
that goes with any swe interview right?
i try to make sure i'm well versed in cloud infra
observability concepts
hadoop/kafka concepts
and know how to code, i.e for loops, logic, BFS/DFS sometimes
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Well i figured for them it’s mostly DSA & System Design
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
right but thats a vast concept too
thats why i think a great summary is
"1 to 2 notches below typical SWE interviews"
when i wrote the "alerting" system, its basically loops, caching, and logic
passive-yellow•4mo ago
1. How’s the pay for DevOps folks compared to SWE?
2. Is Senior DevOps Engineer terminal like Senior SWE is or do they expect you to become a Lead, Principal, etc.?
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
no change to 1 to 1.5 notches below the pay scale
they can expect you to be a lead if you're an SME in your domain
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Ah ok, so a Domain for one person would be like being an expert in a tool like Terraform or Kubernetes?
exotic-emerald•4mo ago
yeah or whatever custom stack your company lets you own
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Thanks for all the help! I will mark this question as complete!
adverse-sapphire•4mo ago
I'm very late to this but basically,
Think about production support and how often human intervention is needed when all kinds of things break.
Like some people here already said, the best you can hope for is a mature environment and a staffed enough team to rotate amongst a weekly or monthly basis (very team size dependent).
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Do you have to fix these things by yourself when they break or do you at least have one other person?
adverse-sapphire•4mo ago
Depending on the team size you're the primary, secondary and onwards if you do have to escalate. But yes.
passive-yellow•4mo ago
That’s a bit scary only because I’ve seen some Lead DevOps folks spend hours or more hunting down the root cause of a problem.
adverse-sapphire•4mo ago
Sounds about right lmao. But yes, give this some thought if deciding to try out this path.
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Can Network Engineering be done remotely? 🤣 might start a thread for that
adverse-sapphire•4mo ago
There was a guy in Isaac's server that did it. Been a while though. He was the Pikachu pfp
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Man im just afraid of being the DevOps person on-call and not able to figure out the issue right away with the business breathing down my neck. Then i get fired and shamed and die in poverty 😭
Nightmare
This fear will also cause me to over-engineer anything i build lol
Production failure? Not on my watch 😤
adverse-sapphire•4mo ago
I've never been on call either, but I've fixed lots of prod issues, I'm a dev
In a complex env, I would have 0 clue what to do if something goes wrong and I don't know the code based
passive-yellow•4mo ago
How do you sleep peacefully at night you brave brave soul 😭
I just have anxiety due to inexperience i guess
But i never feel experienced enough either lol
This week alone, I fixed 3 bugs which had simple causes but were a pain in the ass to figure out 😤😔
Thankfully this wasn’t on-call stuff but just regular data pipelines
adverse-sapphire•4mo ago
Yeah anything with a clock ticking is painful,
Hope you don’t mind me asking but how long would you expect it to take for someone to land a DevOps role when starting from scratch? As in they don’t even have any adjacent experience or projects
adverse-sapphire•4mo ago
I don't have the answer unfortunately as this heavily depends on skill level and how fast you learn. Some folks here took 6 months
rare-sapphire•4mo ago
Honestly, this is one of those things where they usually give you a few weeks to on-board you before getting you on the on-call rotation...
However, each J of mine has different requirements for it..
Even when shit doesn't go right during an outage, I usually have others I can help fall back on, etc.
I would love to get out of roles that are on-call, but in Ops, it's very unlikely to
passive-yellow•4mo ago
Same but I feel like most roles have some type of on-call 😭
rare-sapphire•4mo ago
From what I've seen, yes most do. Really just depends on how much on call.
J1 is basically nothing even though I'm effectively always on call.
J2 has a 3 week rotation where there's 6ish off weeks between rotations. They are actively pushing that to a night shift though.
probable-pink•3mo ago
@ThugNasty - NastyThug got an update for us?
Thanks for making the question 🫡
passive-yellow•3mo ago
Regarding the answer to the question? It’s pretty much what TD and some of the others have mentioned in this thread, mainly on-call and lower pay than SWE.
probable-pink•3mo ago
No like are you working towards working in devops?
Or do we gotta buddy up and keep each other responsible lool
I am glazing over this microsoft virtual devops training rn (hour 3 out of 4)
passive-yellow•3mo ago
Oh, tbh I’m having to learn things like Kafka and stuff for my DE role so haven’t had the time (also tryna get a J3 for a bit) but at least I know now where to look for DevOps courses and stuff when. I do have the time.
At most companies, as a SWE I won’t get to work on building new applications, most likely just maintaining current ones or adding a new feature here and there, so I’d rather do DevOps.
probable-pink•3mo ago
Gotcha, I'm gonna push myself to try and spend time working on devops stuff every week even if it's just a little. I've been procrastinating with this new job, but I'm gonna commit to at least an hour a week
passive-yellow•3mo ago
What’s your current roles? SWE?
probable-pink•3mo ago
I'm basically help desk for 10 users with my manager
2 on site days a week, started about 2 months ago at the end of this week
passive-yellow•3mo ago
Oh nice, yea just keep spending a couple days after work consistently and you should make good progress on KodeKloud or Udemy
For their DevOps stuff
probable-pink•3mo ago
I missed that 45% summer sale a few weeks back and so I was making excuses about waiting till black Friday, but I think I'll just do monthly until then and get the annual
Don't wanna get complacent. Wanna make sure i keep my drive to move into devops
🫡
passive-yellow•3mo ago
I saw someone say you can make a new account, buy the course with the new account and then gift it to your main account lol
Or just keep checking back every other day for a sale
probable-pink•3mo ago
To keep the progress stuff?
I hate the udemy sale pricing strategy lol
passive-yellow•3mo ago
No the first thing i mentioned is to get udemy courses for the sale price without having to wait for a sale cause usually everytime you make a new account everything is on sale for the new account for a couple days
probable-pink•3mo ago
Ah I gotcha
Gd kode kloud is $70/month