DOES16

More and more programming skills as we move from Infrastructure as Code to Everything as Code. Can you tell I'm a software guy ;-)

@jefferyepayne Domain-specific languages for everything!

Is it really skills or is it a mindset? There will always be room for smart people that understand change is necessary and help to promote those changes

I suspect a reunion of the Dev and Ops roles, bifurcated by webscale and Agile a decade ago, is what comes next

Ops people need to learn software, developers need to wear pagers and monitor systems. Both sides need to stretch.

First, disentangle "ops" from "engineering"

Value stream mapping

When people say "NoOps" mostly they are saying, "we no longer need traditional engineering of static asset based, bespoke infrastructure"

in a large organization its not necessary that everyone know everything - better that they know their core skill and collaborate well

My definition of "ops" is narrower: it is the work that tends to be more interrupt-driven. In complex systems, that NEVER goes away.

@charlestbetz Wait, why would we want to distangle "ops" w/ "engineering?" In new world, it's all requies engineering.

@madgreek65 Agree... we have to change culture from vertical to horizontal...

@DOESsummit https://charity.wtf/2016/05/31/operational-best-practices-serverless/ has some thoughts on this

Yep, I see too much automation of waste. Improve first, automate 2nd

Give most people an opportunity to better understand their world (Value Stream Mapping) and they will seek to make it better.

@mickfeech Mindset is the bigger challenge... skills can be taught more readily...

@RealGeneKim no, ops is still a thing. relatively more interrupt-driven. intersects with service/help desk.

I would like to kill the NoOps term - nothing kills transformation like fear of job elimination.

@madgreek65 Devils advocate: automate so you have time to spend on improvements instead of spending time on conference calls while copying & pasting commands from Excel into xterms.

@RealGeneKim engineering on the other hand: longer lead times, different skill sets, more about forward intent as opposed to reaction

I've seen what happens when you don't have Ops familiar Devs, and no Ops - it ends badly.

@mickfeech Agreed but Ops will need to learn new hard and soft skills to work with Dev and cloud providers

Not everyone needs to know everything but the concept of building 'generalized specialists' works really well in DevOps as well as Agile.

@CharlesTBetz Ops is. E.g., sharding

I think "old" ops skills are still relevant. Bash, Powershell... still very useful in a DevOps world.

@paulycomtois And how they play a bigger part in the entire Value Stream. It helps everyone to see the VS from start to finish and how one piece can create a spiral effect.

@anders_wallgren as long as it is not a broken process, otherwise you are enforcing bad practices

@charlestbetz: but in world of platform engineering, and devs carry pagers, it's still very much ops.

@paula_thrasher I worked with new college grads the last couple of years and got "what's a pager" more than once...

@CharlesTBetz Agreed, but that term is very threatening to Ops teams. Prefer #NewOps.

@madgreek65 Agreed.

Not in favor of NoOps term either.

@anders_wallgren I agree - the point it to shift effort from firefights to improvements.

@jefferyepayne true that. AT&T has told its traditional networking engineers to go get CS degrees if they want to advance

It takes a certain type of Dev to keep up w/ Load balancers, firewall rules, DR replication, etc.

Some legacy apps aren't fully horizontally scalable web apps.

The title is less important than the outcomes. If it helps to have the title to drive awareness, that is ok, provided you continue to focus on bringing DevOps culture and ideals to your organization and teams.

I'd avoid using it in a title. Prefer more precision, e.g. release engineering

I'm not a huge fan of the title, personally. It's all about enabling the communication between Dev, Ops, Sec, QA, etc..

@paulycomtois Agree... we don't typically recommend a "DevOps" engineer or team per se

Titles are overrated. Roles are more important and must be clear.

I think the title is a bad idea because it inforces silo-oriented thinking IMO

Titles are absolutely overrated in this space; however sometimes that is what executives understand, they can point to it and say "hey they're doing DevOps"

while i agree the title could symbolize a silo, i do think a separate org is required in some organizations to start the shift which ideally smoothly transitions to the norm

Having DevOps in the title is probably the least important thing you can do on your journey.

On the other hand, for a Sysadmin, it makes it much easier to find a compatible job. Most DevOps titled jobs are really Ops, not dev.

Anti giving a DevOps title because DevOps is the collaboration across roles, not one individual role @DOESsummit

Titles or Roles? I think we are getting closer to understanding what key roles may be more universal and needed. What roles do you see emerging in enterprise organizations?

@paulycomtois I agree completely. It helps to have a champion and thought leader in the organization that people are comfortable to rally behind to drive change in a large community, regardless of the title.

I prefer Release Manager, but do know that at times we use the DevOps title for automation engineer, because its expected

Dislike DevOps Master, Expert, Engineer. Too vague, not skill or role based.

Question: if u were recruiting, what titles have you used for Ops engineering type roles?

We usually recruit for general System Engineer then train. Growth Mindset not fixed. Anyone is a DevOps engineer who wants to learn tools apply mindset @DOESsummit

@RealGeneKim I think a general architect title might suffice. It's all about ensuring that you get passionate technology folks that aren't afraid of change

@paula_thrasher Really? A title of merely "systems engineer" will attract the right people?

Does your culture reward and recognize growth (gaining skills) or intelligence (already smart)

We use 'DevOps Engineers' but expect that only 5 of 100 resumes will hit the mark.

@paula_thrasher @jefferyepayne I thought job reqs w/o "devops" in title wouldn't ever reach the right candidates!

What we're looking for: Solid Sys admin skills + smart and gets things done + growth mindset

We don't use DevOps as an engineering title or a team title, but we build in all the DevOps requirements into the position description. This helps us to focus on the right person rather than the right title.

@paulycomtois Or hard core software developers who love tooling!

It's interesting to me how so many people get emotionally charged over a title. I haven't seen such passionate debate since we tried to come up with a server naming scheme at Silverpop.

Plug for @CSRA talk with @JonCheck1 - Learn about our DevOps Collaborative Cohort model for training

@mickfeech yes! and this speaks to the "fashionable" component of DevOps -- the buzziness

@RealGeneKim But plenty of "DevOps" candidates want the prestige but lack the growth mindset we want

@cshl1 yeah, unfortunately when playing in large enterprises you have to craft your message in those kinds of terms sometimes. Same thing with cloud, big data, etc.

@paula_thrasher any pointers on how you assess growth mindset?

@kylog @paula_thrasher You can find some of Dr. Carol Dweck commercial offerings here: http://mindsetonline...

@kylog @paula_thrasher: you can find the famous diagram on fixed vs. growth mindset here: http://examinedexist...

Assessing a growth mindset - 'What do you do in your spare time?' People with a growth mindset are constantly learning new things in the areas they are passionate about.

@jefferyepayne You've just named our #1 interview question! Also: How do you learn? Name something you learned recently?