Note: translation.: The most popular post in the /r/DevOps subreddit over the past month has drawn significant attention: "Automation Officially Replaced Me at Work — A Trap for DevOps Engineers." The author (from the USA) shared their story, illustrating the popular saying that automation will kill the need for those who maintain software systems.
An explanation in Urban Dictionary for the now well-established phrase about replacing a human with a script.
So, here's the post itself:
In DevOps departments, one often hears a joke: "If we automate everything, we will be out of jobs."
However, that’s exactly what happened to me and about a hundred other DevOps engineers. I can’t go into details due to a non-disclosure agreement: I’m sure that sooner or later the information will come to light, but I don’t want to be the one to reveal it.
I’ll try to give a general idea of how exactly it all happened.
About five years ago, I was working as a manager in a DevOps department at a medium-sized tech company, earning a great salary at the time ($190,000 USD), which compensated for our incredible amount of forced overtime.
As is often the case, a recruiter from LinkedIn reached out to me. He represented the largest multinational conglomerate, which I had no interest in as a potential workplace. The recruiter stated that the company was actively expanding its teams of programmers, developers, and DevOps engineers in anticipation of several large projects, and noted that they would like to invite me for an interview.
I declined and said I wasn't interested. He asked how much I earned and emphasized that the conglomerate would likely offer much more. This piqued my curiosity — I thought I already had a great salary.
Long story short, I flew for the interview, secured a Senior Lead position with a salary of $275,000 USD plus stock options and bonuses, as well as the possibility to work remotely (which meant I didn’t have to relocate), even though the idea of working for such a huge corporation didn’t appeal to me. However, the offer was too good to refuse (they promised me much more than Amazon did earlier that same year).
The company had a DevOps department, but it mainly consisted of senior system administrators who could write enough in Python/Bash/PowerShell to make it risky. Therefore, they needed a team of real DevOps engineers with experience in lower-level programming languages to tackle complex projects.
Over the next three years, our department grew. I must say, the management did everything right. We were almost never denied anything we requested, and we completed over 90% of our planned projects on time and on budget, which is truly remarkable.
However, about a year and a half ago, it became clear that we had automated literally *everything*. Of course, regular maintenance and checks still took place, but for the last year and a half, I realistically worked only 1-2 hours a day because there was practically nothing to do. I wasn’t planning to quit such a well-paying job, but I feared that the day would eventually come, and it arrived yesterday.
It was essentially announced that most of the DevOps teams were disbanded (75 people remained to handle specific applications), as the IT and Software Engineering teams were capable of managing all the code, and there simply was no more work for the DevOps guys.
I was offered a position in the IT team, but the salary there was almost half as much. I could continue working remotely, but they wanted me to eventually move to the city where the office is located and come in more frequently.
It’s a shame it turned out this way, as I enjoyed working there. The company took good care of us (except for the layoff, of course), and there aren’t many places for DevOps with salaries above $200,000 and a standard 8-hour workday, almost without overtime.
Fortunately, I wisely managed my finances and was able to pay off 4 mortgages over the last 5 years. Now I have a small additional income, my expenses are limited, so I can afford to take my time finding a new place.
Additions (from the translator)
The author himself Your headline: “I apologize if this turned out to be clickbait: I was just trying to add a bit of humor to the title, not intending to turn my story into clickbait or a DevOps horror story.”
As for the mentioned 'trap', 'pitfall' in the context of DevOps, not all commentators agreed. A couple of additions from other commentators about this story:
On salary. Important factors include regional and professional. The author, being a software engineer with 25 years of experience, held the position of a DevOps team manager. His expertise is not limited to knowledge of modern infrastructure but
- extends For those who also thought that 75 DevOps engineers is a lot. In this company, there are
- over 50,000 people and literally thousands of applications are functioning. If you haven't read
Bonus
the recent interview ), for the DevOpsConf conference andthe DevOps Deflope podcast — So what then
[in the case of simplifying the use of K8s] will happen to the engineers and system administrators who support Kubernetes? Dmitry: What happened to accountants after the appearance of 1C? Approximately the same. Before, calculations were done on paper — now it’s in the program. Labor productivity has increased significantly, but the work hasn’t disappeared. If it once took 10 engineers to screw in a light bulb, now one will suffice.
The amount of software and the number of tasks seem to be growing faster than new DevOps professionals appear and productivity increases. There is currently a specific shortage in the market, and it will last a long time. Later, everything will reach a certain normalcy, where productivity will increase, more serverless solutions will emerge, a neural network will be added to Kubernetes that will allocate resources just as needed… and it will do everything itself — human, step aside and don’t interfere.
The amount of software and tasks, I believe, is currently increasing faster than the emergence of new DevOps professionals and the improvement of efficiency. There is a specific shortage in the market right now, and it will last a long time. Eventually, everything will stabilize to a point where work efficiency will increase, with more serverless solutions, a neural network will be integrated with Kubernetes to optimize resources just as needed... and in general, it will do everything as required — human, step aside and don't interfere.
But someone will still need to make the decisions. Clearly, this person's level of qualification and specialization is higher. Right now, the accounting department doesn't need 10 employees managing the books just to avoid fatigue. It's simply unnecessary. Many documents are automatically scanned and recognized by the electronic document management system. Just one smart chief accountant with significantly greater skills and a solid understanding is enough.
Overall, this trend is evident across all industries. The same applies to cars: in the past, a car came with a mechanic and three drivers. Now, driving a car is the simplest process that we all participate in every day. No one thinks about how complex a car actually is.
DevOps or systems engineering are here to stay — the level of sophistication and work efficiency will increase.
P.S.
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Source: habr.com
