DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • Leadership Suite
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » Enterprise DevOps » DevOps Is Killing the ITOps Engineer (and That’s Bad)

DevOps Is Killing the ITOps Engineer

DevOps Is Killing the ITOps Engineer (and That’s Bad)

By: Chris Tozzi on July 12, 2019 Leave a Comment

In theory, DevOps is about bridging the gap between developers and ITOps teams. In practice, however, DevOps often can feel as though its real goal is to turn ITOps engineers into developers, without really requiring developers to dive head-first into ITOps work.

Recent Posts By Chris Tozzi
  • Practical Approaches to Long-Term Cloud-Native Security
  • Why AWS Cost Optimization Is About More than Saving Money
  • Optimizing AWS Performance Over the Long Term
More from Chris Tozzi
Related Posts
  • DevOps Is Killing the ITOps Engineer (and That’s Bad)
  • Is NoOps the Future of Cloud Networking?
  • DevOps Unbound EP 21 Leading a DevOps Transformation – Lessons Learned – TechStrong TV
    Related Categories
  • Blogs
  • DevOps Culture
  • Enterprise DevOps
    Related Topics
  • developers
  • devops
  • IT operations
  • ITOps
Show more
Show less

In this article, we’ll explain why DevOps gives more glory to development work than to ITOps, and how that poses a problem to the DevOps world as a whole.

DevOps Connect:DevSecOps @ RSAC 2022

In DevOps, Developers Come First

We live in a world that fetishizes code and the creation of code. Developers fetch among the highest salaries in IT. The work they do is sometimes compared to magic. There are a litany of boot camps designed to teach people to code. From Silicon Valley to The Social Network, coders are depicted in popular media as whiz kids who are building a fantastical world the rest of us can’t even imagine until the coders hand it to us.

By comparison, ITOps engineers—people whose main job is to deploy and manage software, not write it—get much less glory. I’ve yet to hear of an ITOps boot camp. Generally speaking, ITOps employees get paid much less than developers; some ITOps workers, such as those who do help desk work, barely make minimal wage. And no one makes movies where an ITOps engineer saves the world by rebooting a crashed server or applying the latest security patches.

This trend is problematic, of course, because the work performed by ITOps is equally critical as development work for sustaining our digital world. Without ITOps teams, all of the code developers get paid so much to write would be useless because there would be no one to put it into production and keep it running when it’s there.

There are many possible explanations for our tendency to celebrate programmers much more than the people who manage the software programmers build. The most important reason, I think, is we live in a world where creators of all types are generally held in greater esteem than maintainers. That’s true in a variety of fields, from building science (where architects who design structures are held in much higher regard than, say, the roofers and painters who maintain them) to the automotive industry (the white-collared engineers who designed your car are probably paid a lot more than the grit-streaked mechanic who changes your oil). The IT industry is not special in this regard.

DevOps as Euphemism for ‘Everyone Should Program’

The fetishization of programming would probably happen even if DevOps didn’t exist. But sometimes, I think DevOps is exacerbating the tendency to deny ITOps teams their fair share of prestige.

Beneath the surface of many conversations about DevOps culture and continuous delivery is the idea that if only ITOps engineers knew more about how to write code and discuss code with developers, their organizations would be better positioned to deliver software more quickly while also improving quality.

In my experience, it’s much rarer to find DevOps advocates interested in pushing developers to play a more hands-on role in ITOps work. Almost no one goes around saying, “If only developers spent more time provisioning infrastructure, software delivery would be more efficient.” And when they do, they are accused of trying to kill the developer by requiring programmers to participate in maintenance-related tasks below their pay grade.

I’d therefore suggest one of the challenges DevOps faces today is not killing developers, but killing ITOps engineers and further devaluing the work they do. To keep advancing DevOps, we need to pursue greater parity between developers and ITOps teams within DevOps culture.

— Chris Tozzi

Filed Under: Blogs, DevOps Culture, Enterprise DevOps Tagged With: developers, devops, IT operations, ITOps

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
The State of the CI/CD/ARA Market: Convergence

The State of the CI/CD/ARA Market: Convergence

The entire CI/CD/ARA market has been in flux almost since its inception. No sooner did we find a solution to a given problem than a better idea came along. The level of change has been intensified by increasing use, which has driven changes to underlying tools. Changes in infrastructure, such ... Read More
« Workflow Automation Poised to Accelerate DevOps
What Quality Metrics Matter Most for DevOps? »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Continuous Deployment
Monday, July 11, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT
Using External Tables to Store and Query Data on MinIO With SQL Server 2022
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT
Goldilocks and the 3 Levels of Cardinality: Getting it Just Right
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

Rust in Linux 5.20 | Deepfake Hiring Fraud | IBM WFH ‘New Normal’
June 30, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Moving From Lift-and-Shift to Cloud-Native
June 30, 2022 | Alexander Gallagher
The Two Types of Code Vulnerabilities
June 30, 2022 | Casey Bisson
Common RDS Misconfigurations DevSecOps Teams Should Know
June 29, 2022 | Gad Rosenthal
Quick! Define DevSecOps: Let’s Call it Development Security
June 29, 2022 | Don Macvittie

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

DevOps: Mastering the Human Element
DevOps: Mastering the Human Element

Most Read on DevOps.com

What Is User Acceptance Testing and Why Is it so Important?
June 27, 2022 | Ron Stefanski
Chip-to-Cloud IoT: A Step Toward Web3
June 28, 2022 | Nahla Davies
Rust in Linux 5.20 | Deepfake Hiring Fraud | IBM WFH ‘New No...
June 30, 2022 | Richi Jennings
DevOps Connect: DevSecOps — Building a Modern Cybersecurity ...
June 27, 2022 | Veronica Haggar
Common RDS Misconfigurations DevSecOps Teams Should Know
June 29, 2022 | Gad Rosenthal

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.