Is DevOps Bullshit?

[JMB]

Seems like there are a lot of people out there who seem to be falling victim of the buzz surrounding devops (spread by marketeer and recruiters) giving the movement a bad name.

Any thoughts?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/devops-bullshit-joachim-bauernberger

[Sean OMeara]

be the devops bullshit you want to see in the world.

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[lavaman]

I agree. I've been trying to push change in large enterprises for several years. It seems that one of two things happens. Either they want change, but only in a very limited context, or they think they can fix things by creating yet another silo called devops. Neither of these is the fundamental culture change that devops represents. Rejecting a concept due to poor implementations of said concept is pretty ignorant.

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[Brian]

As we all know, most problems in large corporations are due to leadership problems. My only hope is that leadership understands that 'solos are bad mmmk' (how do we get Mr. Mackey to recite this tag line). As engineers we need to focus on a consistent message that DevOps is a culture change not a new solo that disempowers engineers.

I work for a large health care company and the biggest message I have, as part of the leadership team is that my team is NOT the 'devops' team, we are still the operations team, but the role of operations is NOT to build a new 'empire' but to build infrastructure services which enable a fast flow of work from development to production. 

The problem that most enterprises face is 'empire building' this is the idea that the bigger the budget, the larger the manpower, the more power I have. As a leader in this space the thing I keep working hard to prove is that a small team still provides value, influence, and control over the overall process. 

At the end of the day I don't have much advice, but I'm hiring. Do you want to work for a leader that promotes DevOps ideas? Do you want to work for a leader that empowers engineers? If you keep working for leaders that are too busy trying to build an empire you are part of the problem... 

[Damon Edwards]

I highly recommend that people read the entire original post (not a post about it or just the inflammatory title):

https://lionfacelemonface.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/devops-is-bullshit-why-one-programmer-doesnt-do-it-anymore/

It's not about marketing gone awry. It's an indictment of traditional large company culture and how the reflex is to cargo cult bits and pieces of new organizing ideas and never actually address the behaviors that got them into a position that needed fixing in the first place... All to disastrous results. [side note about history: like Lean, Agile, etc]

The author found himself at companies claiming "DevOps".  But when the author didn't like what was happening he did his own research into DevOps and found that what these companies were doing wasn't DevOps (and that he was actually already trying to work in a DevOps style of working for most of his career on his own).

The money shot from the actual article:

There is some nuance here, and my experience can help save you some trouble by identifying some of the common mistakes:

• DevOps doesn’t make specialists obsolete.

• Developers can learn systems and operations, but nothing beats experience.

• Operations people can learn development too, but again, nothing beats experience.

• Operations and development have historically be separated for a reason – there are compromises you must make if you integrate the two.

• Tools and automation are not enough.

• Developers have to want DevOps. Operations have to want DevOps. At the same time.

• Using “DevOps” to save money by reducing staff will blow up in your face.

• You can’t have DevOps and still have separate operations and development teams. Period. 

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[lavaman]

I think I'll be looking again soon if you'd be interested in working with me again.

Joe

[Aries McRae]

[gareth rushgrove]

On 10 Mar 2015 02:28, "JMB" <joachim.ba...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Seems like there are a lot of people out there who seem to be falling victim of the buzz surrounding devops (spread by marketeer and recruiters) giving the movement a bad name.

Read Damon's response to the post, and what it's about. I want to address something else - specifically the marketers/recruiters point.

Marketing is results driven and generally filled with metrics (leads, sales, downloads, visitors, oh my). If something doesn't help you improve your metrics you'd probably drop it. So lets assume using Devops in a marketing campaign works for the moment (also see why everyone mentions Docker in every other blog post).

Recruitment is similarly results driven, and generally customer driven. It's *much* easier to hire someone for a client (and make the commission) if they want someone with that skill set. So lets assume clients are asking recruiters for Devops skills.

Recruiters and marketers are effects, not causes. The cause is the growing evidence that Devops practices improve the bottom line for businesses. It's analysts saying the same. It's the growing gap between the leading edge and the default business as usual. And yes it's folks cargo culting the above.

So why is that around Devops and not a single practice (automation, metrics everywhere, you build it you run it, blameless postmortems, continuous integration, integrated teams)? I think because it's the combination of some of those and other practices that have the effect, and because at a high level you can talk about Devops without immediately getting into the weeds. Devops is marketing. It is a buzzword. That's a good thing, it's allowing for that conversation to talk place at a management level in a way that a specific technical practice often wouldn't.

See the history of the agile movement too. From the manifesto to Scrum (and other formalisations) to the scaled agile framework to the backlash. The speed of change might have increased a bit, or that might just be a side effect of the hyperconnected culture we inhabit.

So, don't hate on recruiters or marketeers or managers. Have some empathy. Ask for the data. Understand the incentives at play. And if you think you're 'just a developer' then read the New kingmakers book.

Gareth

[R.I.Pienaar]

My problem with where we're at is that the word has become a filler that
HAS to be used in any tech announcement, regardless of context or meaning
it has to be shoved in.

Understandable, it's the big buzz and as you say it's peoples job and given
the high visibility it will be used.

But no-one has a clue what it means. And this is our fault. We never made
a definition of the word and so it's become a trap word. Every marketing
release has to include it, no marketing person can be expected to understand
it and so they are almost forced into a situation of releasing the most
embarrassing crap that make us all cringe.

We're to blame, we need to find a way to stop dumping marketing/manager/industry
into this unavoidable trap.

It's something I've heard more regularly now - remove all mentions of DevOps from
CVs because it attracts the worst kind of employer, do not talk about it because
you're associated with people who - due to no fault of their own - are using the
word in in the most hilariously wrong ways.

No-one who comes into this field today, be it tech or non tech people, can be
expected to have any hope of finding out what DevOps means.

[James Bailey]

My client is currently buying a Devops Solution from IBM.

</faceplam>

[Greg Damiani]

first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then you call it "devops", then they buy it.