In a word, yes - "Devops" is indeed a great career choice for a person who wants to create new products and services on an innovative platform. But it's important to understand that in addition to being technically proficient, a Devops engineer must also possess interpersonal skills. How do you know if you have these skills? Here are some questions to ask yourself:
How well do I understand the distinction between configuration management, integration, and automation? Do I think in terms of a model of one system performing many functions? Do I visualize a production environment where all the actions involve humans or just machines? What kinds of software engineering tools do I already have at my fingertips so that I don't need to learn a new one to learn how to use these tools in combination with each other?
How well do I understand the concept of continuous integration, configuration management, and collaboration? Do I collaborate regularly with my team and with the broader community of developers who write software code for my system administration system? Does it feel like a collaborative effort or does it feel like a competition? How easily can I move from my current role to another role without having to reconfigure everything?
How well do I understand the relationship between configuration management, integration, and automation? Do I agree that it's important to choose each one wisely? Do I have an opinion about the value of Continuous Integration (CI) and how that value affects my ability to responsibly maintain the codebase? How well do I understand how these tools fit into my overall software development team structure?
Finally, do I see the need to customize my toolbelt to better suit my needs as an operation team? Can I gain any competitive advantage by doing so? These are just some of the questions that I ask myself when thinking about the pros and cons of my position in an AWS environment. My wife is also an engineer in a small company who works primarily on managing the AWS resources. We have learned over the years that the combination of an open source toolset, custom code, and extensive automation can make life easier for everyone. We've also found that having multiple teams using various tools from AWS can be incredibly useful.
The short answer is no, because it isn't an appropriate career for most engineers. However, we have both found that it fits well into our professional model. Specifically, we're able to leverage AWS's versatility, mission-critical applications, and extensive support for both our customer and our partner ecosystems to run large-scale infrastructure without having to spend the time or money to do so. If you're an engineer looking to move into software engineering or management, I would encourage you to take a look at whether or not you might have a place in the AWS environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment