The Harsh Reality of Being a DevOps Engineer 

The biggest WTF trick that management ever pulled off was to convince developers that they needed to be Dev/Ops Engineers. They put a new title on it, praised it, and developer drank it up. Suddenly it got the BUZZ and people are wickedly attracted to whatever is buzzing. SO they jumped and now years later are wondering "WTF DID I DO?" The key - RESIST THE BUZZ. I've been in IT for well over 20 years and the buzz never stops with this field. There is always something new, something better, something else that everyone else is doing......the BUZZ. Find what you like and ferociously stay true to that. Management finds the BUZZ irresistible and most managers push for the BUZZ.

Your voice is so soothing and this video has been a fantastic help gaining clarity on what i want in a career.

Refreshingly honest take! I always loved setting up the infrastructure for the team in my CS projects, and even today, I prefer writing tooling and DSLs for use by analysts than webdev slop. You've got me considering transitioning into DevOps

This video is excellent. I've been working as a DevOps engineer for about five years now, and there's one thing I've come to realize: it's a profession where burnout is not just common, it's almost expected. And it's hit me hard. I'm seriously contemplating a career change, despite my passion for the field. It's a strange feeling - on one hand, the pay is great, but that doesn't seem to compensate for the growing dislike I have towards my job. At home, I have a Kubernetes cluster set up in my home lab, and tinkering with it is genuinely enjoyable. But the thought of turning on my work laptop every morning fills me with dread.

This video has gotten noticed by the algorithm, this will boost your channel 100%.

Excellent. I may rewatch this when i have a discouraging day. Thank you for a much appreciated realistic explanation

You shed light on a common sentiment in the tech industry. It's not just DevOps; the expectation for a holistic understanding of the SDLC is becoming the norm for software engineers. Embracing continuous learning is the key to staying relevant in our dynamic field.

i love working as devops, lots of constant learning, very challenging sometimes im usually with a lot of things going around, developing process, adopting strategies, standarizing its very taxing on my time, but its specially worth when working with a highly capable team problem solving is something thats highly appreaciated here

This video is a must-watch. Thanks for making this.

Great insights mate, I appreciate your video. Sub earned.

man..for me, being distracted constantly is the biggest con especially if your manager don't account for it. I can relate to all of the points you said

Fantastic vid. I've been DevOps since before it was cool and can relate to much of this. One of the bigger issues for DevOps/CloudOps/Platform Engineers is when they find themselves in a product company that uses technology, rather than a tech company that makes products. The perspectives, values, etc., are all backwards, and they find themselves wondering what the difference is between themselves and their competitors when they have all the same "pieces"... Generally though, the industry is getting much better at embracing ops-first(ish) postures.

This video was really on point 😂 Thanks for making it!

“Developer complains that DevOps contains Ops”. All of these complaints are things that operations have been dealing with their entire career. I’m glad people are starting to understand just how exhausting/sucky operations can be. The context switch is particularly brutal. As well as having to constantly relearn everything every 2 years.

Thanks for this. Those points from software engineers has swayed me. Cheers for this

I've been DevOps Engineer about 7 years now and its hard to see me doing anything else in the industry. In normal life, I hate unpredictability and learning constantly new things, but in work, those are the things that keep me engaged and fresh, an idea of being a basic SW engineer coding some particular things just feels boring and depressive, and the pay is great is another advantage. I think you got most of the challenges pretty spot on, you need certain kind of personality to really enjoy DevOps work.

After 15 years in UX/IxD I was looking for a career change to devops (since is almost a hobby dealing with infra and servers since teenage years discovering slackware, and I never stopped). Started this video to get some cons perspective and maybe reevaluate the route, but man this got me even more craving for some devops/infra role (most the part 1 and 5, bc my focus is broken and get super bored doing only one thing for days). Great video, going back to the studies and the job form filling (really hard to get a entrance role these days :( ).

This is a great video! I had a chance to work with the DevOps team on my company while I was working as a developer. There were some really fun aspects to DevOps and the technologies, but like you mentioned, I really missed coding applications. The points at 4:40 were spot on. You may be thrust into more responsibility than you anticipated, even at a junior level.

It seems like you spoke my mind, glad to know there are other people who feel the same. Some days are good which you love some are too distracting. I love being challenged so I am enjoying my job.

such a great topics breakdown. thats exactly what I was looking for

Thank you, I'm currently studying to be a DevOps engineer switching from Software Engineering it's good to hear about the negatives because it provides a realistic view of the job as compared to only seeing positives.

I'm an aspiring SWE going into the self taught route. I think your content is great and you present really well! A sub from me!

I am not that good in Infra part, but other things in DevOps are interesting to me. Got Bachelor degree in Computer Science, Masters in Networks, worked for many years as Software Dev, but wanted to try new things. DevOps seemed quite interesting, because you learn all the time new things, and understand how everything is put together. It's quite true you can't focus on one thing in particular, but at least this helps you grow somehow and to be more disciplined in a way.

Thank you for this video- I am a project manager for the past 7 yrs and now transitioning into DevOps and this was a great video with excellent advise for someone getting into DevOps.

Great content, thank you!

The quality is amazing ❤

I’m a senior System administration working for the DoD cloud infrastructure and just got my Linux+ and DKA (docker) cert. my goal of 2024 is to land a full devops role and pass Terraform cert as well

I too started my devops journey recently, you are 100 % right, task over task make us don't stay focused

Great video. I am a softawre engineer looking to transition into DevOps. In software the code you wrote last week is already outdated and incompatible with the other library introduced.. I dont think constantly learning is something you don't do in software and I would say you do it as much or more. BTW, with the bad tech market, you have a much better shot at a stable career with DevOps/SRE work than SWE. SWE is quite saturated and the requirements for a software engineer are all over the map from being the architect, back/front end developer to the web designer.

Great video man!!

Great channel, thanks so much

I've been in DevOps for a few years. This video is so accurate!

Very informative video. Thanks Well, I want fix job hours but I’m completely fine with the nature of job 👍

Most companies in my area is looking for software developers with devops experience. In fact I am going on an intervju soon where they highlighted this. I don´t think I would be happy only doing devops but for sure I like to be able to manage all aspects of delivering a product so devops is included in that.

Many thanks for sharing your amazing video with us Henry!! I swear to you it's soo inspiring🔥🔥🔥 could you plz make one or more videos about DevOps Onboarding process for first few weeks and moths, for Fresh college graduates, and Juniors as well also, more videos about Tips and tricks, like for ex you mentioned ChatGPT for IaC tools, maybe in the future you can make tuts for it. I subscribed to your channel for support your AMAZING work! Thank in Advance brother!! 🔥🔥🔥

here I am, a Machine Learning Engineer who also does MLOps from time to time. I love my role because I can scratch all my itch at once. be it DevOps, ML itself and SWE. I can relate twith everything you said.

Couldn't agree more to each of these points mentioned. I work as a PKI consultant, the amount of time I spend on that technology is a day to at most 2 days in a week. Rest of is meetings, follow ups about meetings, dependencies on other teams, conducting workshops to increase technology adaptation, only to later discover there is problem with funding. Companies do not focus on a devops framework long enough for their staff to be moderately competent in it. Board level members and CTO changes the whole stack, that sends ripples down below in a bid to cut costs.

Useful one!👌✨

Great video, and really helpful insights. How about a video about how and from where to learn the DevOps as a beginner ?

stfp bro ur video is popping when someone is just getting started

Harsh Reality well articulated

Just started a position as a DevOps engineer. My background is as an SDET engineer, so it was a somewhat unexpected change of pace with regards to the day to day operations. I think this was largely due to my underestimation of the role managing infrastructure plays in the position. I also was under the impression that building out the CI/CD pipelines on which the test run involved actually building said tests, as I was very familiar with in my role as an SDET. While these assumptions weren't on the mark, I'm still really enjoying the position. I especially enjoy that learning on the job isn't something unique to new engineers, but a constant part of the position which engineers cut out time for at all levels of seniority. I love learning new things, but in other roles felt like it was the mark of a newer dev to spend a significant portion of time learning. I feel like taking the time to learn is expected in the role of a DevOps engineer, which is quite refreshing.

Thanks. Interesting vid. I find devOps being a lot more interesting than a "simple" developer. But me being a bit weak at the coding side I find the DevOps role a bit challenging too.

Thanks Mr Henry for sincere insights. Cheers 🍻

learning constantly new things for me is a requirement in tech industry. Everything can be change. I'm full-stack developer, I do some devops sometime, for me, it is difficult because it need you to practice all the time. Otherwise, we can forget most of things after a week not touching it.

more videos re devops would be nice to watch. thanks

Funny that I started listening the video and was like "obviously, that's the Ops part of DevOps", I've been in the area more that 15 years (before it was even called DevOps) and what you describe is exactly my job now, and that's what I like, constant challenge, always learning something new (using docker since 0.3 for example, look this new shinny "bsd jail for linux" XD ), always in that "discomfort zone" where you have to figure out how this new tech works and pass it to the rest of the team. Can be challenging at times, but very rewarding at least for me, not everyone is made for that job. If you are starting in this area let me tell you something: you will never know enough, but you have to keep the wagon moving forward.

As a fullstack swe, I agree with your take!

We build our own cloud for internal products. For me it’s puppet, salt, ansible, docker, python, ruby, bash, kvm, groovy, distro images, kickstart, packaging rpm. It’s just endless

I am excited about this job opportunity as it aligns perfectly with my skills and interests in DevOps. Before focusing on DevOps, I was a Linux user and a backend web developer. I believe my experience in web development has provided me with valuable knowledge that will be useful in my pursuit of learning DevOps. I am eager to gain more experience through an internship in this field.

As a college student can’t say much bout how corporates devops engineer works. But knowing this is ahead of me if I choose this career i like it thanks.

I don't even know I'm trynna transition from commerce background to DevOps, cool thing about what you have mentioned is that I love troubleshooting things, and I'm open to knew technology and I think since i have opted for DevOps course i barely go out! seems like kinda getting used to it. I don't even know if they would even consider me for the role or not. (TSE VMware)

thank you great video!

i've been working as a DevOps Engineer since 2014, it's definitely not an easy role to assume, however the part i like the most is doing a lot of different programming automations that are not necessarily CRUD applications. For example a have scripts to deploy applications on kubernetes, copy key vaults data, provide entire environments just in a few minutes.

I currently work as a data engineer and whenever I can do something infrastructure related I have so much more fun than when I’m writing a pipeline to gather and process some poorly structured data following constantly changing requirements from the product managers. Devops sounds much more in line with what I enjoy. Any advice on where to start? I already know terraform and got AWS SAA cert.

Constant learning is the life of a software engineer as well.

great video bro ,btw what are the Video editing tools you are using ?

You as a quant of Consciousness were incarcerated on the planet to manage json files! What a life!

"You may only have surface level knowledge of certain tools but still be considered a subject matter expert by other people in your company." I thought I was the only one, and it's been hard to deal with. Especially when management gets pushy.. I'm just hopeful I can find something else when they determine that I will never know it all. lol

I've been DevOps Engineer about 5 years and can't land a job for 4 months already because mass layoff and a lot of developers switched to DevOps the market is overheated now.

This is the perspective of a Jr Engineer, and it shows. I'm assuming you worked as a DevOps Engineer at a startup company. If that's the case, sure, it's definitely a grind. But chances are most everyone else across the entire Engineering organization is also grinding. Because, you know, that's how startups survive. Seems like you're actually into the managing Infrastructure piece. My advice would be to stay with it and eventually join a bigger company. Ideally one that doesn't put DevOps in the job title, and actually respects the fact that managing Infrastructure is its own separate discipline. You'll come to find the work suddenly feels way more stable, there's no quicksand under your feet (constant learning about new tools and switching to them), your Manager will be more than reasonable about deadlines, and you'll write way more actual code/will have the time to contribute upstream to open source projects.

Based on all the IT and Tech Engineers I have met, DevOps Engineers make less than Software Architects and Engineers, in general! Never done DevOps Engineering but I might consider it! My specialty is hardware, operating systems, networks and software engineering!

Sounds like a good step forward for me being in a Kubernetes support role as learing is pretty much my second nature.

Even though I’m an application programmer I like DevOps simply cause I like not being at the mercy of others. I like controlling my servers and optimizing performance with my code and my servers.

The most important factor here I think is (paradoxically enough) the one that was left for last in this video @6:00 Changing your Focus. Some degree of repetition + long enough focus is what ultimately enables expertise in any field. On the other hand constant, excessive context switching is quite the path to guaranteed burnout. Not only in computers is context switching expensive, it is also so for our own cognitive processing. In fact I think that is very much a make or break issue for devops. Attempting to be a jack of all trades -> master of none? Moreover many of these "trades" might have a short usability lifespan because of fast evolution of frameworks, platforms, and cloud technologies/tools in specific tech stacks some companies have.

Don't forget, devs jumping to devops see a better overall view of the industry and the pipeline they work in. Yeah doesn't scratch the coding itch but thay doesn't mean you can build custom CLI tools.

On the 'focus' subject, how do you manage other work that you have that is being managed in agile scrum sprints? My work, although not DevOps, is very similar in terms of demands on my time, dealing with incidents etc. and so i don't think sprints align naturally with it, much to the frustration of managers who want to apply it blindly to everything.

Great video!

This is one of the best videos about DevOps role, keep uploading videos !!!. Loves your "realistic" takes on DevOps roles instead of highlighting the pro's only. I'm surprised that theres one thing you don't mention and that is On-Call rotation, if your team lack sufficient amount of resource (both in manpower & infra) then it can be super stressful. And team cohesive/coordination is also super duper important, I remember that on time we had a major migration, Our SRE Lead managed to split on-call so the teams are not burned out, "It's a marathon, not a sprint" she said, and always ensures checkpoints are introduced. Definitely one of the best Lead I've worked with

Do you think it would be better to focus on rust and go for devsecops or would it be more beneficial to learn clojure or elixir as there is a lack of professionals and support in these languages

This video's thumbnail and title were quite negative, yet the content of the video was kinda nice and made me more excited about my field xD

I find the 2 last points particulary relatable.

he said he talked me out of a devops engineer, but his demeanor is friendly, smiling, and is breaking down it's format very well?

Amazing video. 7:00 Automation Tasks is real

It all depends on what software you work on, what product, projects and teams. Working on a narrowly scoped functionality, fixing bugs, dealing with untested spaghetti code copied from SO can be more frustrating and boring than Infrastructure automation. Nowadays many software engineering jobs are plain and simply farming k8s yaml files!

Where i was working last, they basically expected you to be both. It was difficult and annoying. I thought it a bit excessive to be expected to be everything from a backend developer to a Cloud Formation expert.

great video!

thanks for the video

I'm a devops engineer. Always been very good at pretty much everything so I can be a SME.on a ton of different platforms. The annoying thing is that I want to just automate stuff as it's fun but you get stuck doing a lot of BS to maintain stuff once you automate most everything for a company. Might be more fun to be a consultant devops engineer to automate companies up to a certain threshold and then move on rather get stuck with the boring maintenance phase.

Which structured, tech job has all those things and pays the most?

Great insights !! Where can one connect with you to share thoughts about tech?

I have 3.8 yoe as a software engineer and I did mostly C++. But the problem is that my team don't do k8 and cloud at all. I want to learn how infrastructure is build and how services are scaled. That's why I'm transitioning into devops.

I am an infrastructure engineer and that is exactly my day to day. But I have a GREAT Manager.

It's not only devops, it's everywhere in tech, and even non-tech. For example, many bigger tech companies require passing few coding interviews, but the skill set tested by them is unrealistic: real development and devops require people skills, endurance skills (90% of tasks is boring bugfixing of bugs made by someone else, who probably doesn't even work here) and engineering skills (being able to understand limitations and select the best existing solution). However coding interview checks only coding skills, which constitute maybe 1% of what's it needed for a programmer (for a devops even less), leaving the rest of unchecked, and everyone frustrated: good coders because they got a wrong, boring job, experienced engineers because they have to learn not-used things before interviews (or get rejected) and then similarly - get a boring mostly bugfixing job, HR and mangement because they hire wrong and inefficient people. And it all comes down to the fact that most people in HR and management have no idea what the job of their employees is actually about!!!

Thank you for putting it out, really not for me. If I'm forced to do such job (visa expiry, threat of starvation) I would, but not out of my free will. It's important to have honest opinions on jobs.

Good insights

You will need to learn the other aspects of software engineering when your project isn’t staffed properly.

You are a honest person, thanks. I guess the future is plumbing 😂

Great video for devs to stay devs like me and stop confusing themselves. :-)

Transitioning from Design to DevOps. Here we go.

Just a little warning for some of the aspiring DevOps engineers out there. Make sure you're on the same team as the developers writing the code. If you're working as a DevOps engineer and your role is to do deployments for another team, troubleshoot a product team's cloud infrastructure or configure their database then you're actually working on an ops/service team and what you're doing is the opposite of DevOps. DevOps is getting the developers who create the product to own the operations for that product. They do their own deployments. They own their cloud infrastructure. They configure their own database. If you're not on their team then make sure you're only there to act as a consultant and to guide them, or to build common solutions and pipelines that other teams consume to do their own ops. If you're on a DevOps team that handles deployments, monitoring, launching and maintaining cloud infrastructure for other teams then your company isn't doing DevOps and you'll quickly experience all of the problems that DevOps is trying to solve.

All of this is true, especially if people have dedicated "devops teams", which for me shouldn't exist, its not devops at that point, its a support team.

regarding “constantly evolving”, these days it feels more like constantly reinventing a rounder wheel 😅

I work as consulting devops at a company. So most of my work is just projects at some other companies. Almost no fires to put out. It's amazing. I guess in-house devops get the most burn.

Do you need a prior skill before becoming a Dev Ops Engineer... like is this just a type of programming? Where do I start?

I think that DevOps isn’t a job title, is a culture that involves on everyone in the company. I would describe it as a SRE of Google, but also a SRE have much culture powers than a “DevOps” engineer. Source: sre book from google (oreilly).

Kindly let us know what to freelance in devOps doesn't hold some weight in freelance domain?

What really bothers me about DevOps is that it's not uncommon to hire a "junior engineer" with nothing to their name but an AWS cert, who is then delegated authority over seasoned and experienced engineers and administrators to build things that they don't understand. The problem with DevOps is that it's a shortcut that exists to handle widespread inexperience and incompetence. It has not been proven worthy of this purpose.

This is a game-changer. I had the privilege of reading something similar, and it was a game-changer. "Mastering AWS: A Software Engineers Guide" by Nathan Vale

man all I care about is paying my bills. Ima keep taking software dev, dev ops, info-sec, networking projects etc as they come. Being flexible is how you survive layoffs.