The devops team set up a pretty effective setup for our devops pipeline that allows us to scale infinity. Which would be great if we had infinite resources.
We’re hitting situations where the solution is to throw more hardware at it.
And IT cannot provision tech fast enough within budget for any of this. So devs are absolutely suffering right now.
I’ve always found this weird. I think to be a good software developer it helps to know what’s happening under the hood when you take an action. It certainly helps when you want to optimize memory access for speed etc.
I genuinely do know both sides of the coin. But I do know that the majority of my fellow developers at work most certainly have no clue about how computers work under the hood, or networking for example.
I find it weird because, to be good at software development (and I don’t mean, following what the computer science methodology tells you, I mean having an idea of the best way to translate an idea into a logical solution that can be applied in any programming language, and most importantly how to optimize your solution, for example in terms of memory access etc) requires an understanding of the underlying systems. That if you write software that is sending or receiving network packets it certainly helps to understand how that works, at least to consider the best protocols to use.
. I think to be a good software developer it helps to know what’s happening under the hood when you take an action.
There’s so many layers of abstractions that it becomes impossible to know everything.
Years ago, I dedicated a lot of time understanding how bytes travel from a server into your router into your computer. Very low-level mastery.
That education is now trivia, because cloud servers, cloudflare, region points, edge-servers, company firewalls… All other barriers that add more and more layers of complexity that I don’t have direct access to but can affect the applications I build. And it continues to grow.
Add this to the pile of updates to computer languages, new design patterns to learn, operating system and environment updates…
This is why engineers live alone on a farm after they burn out.
It’s not feasible to understand everything under the hood anymore. What’s under the hood grows faster than you can pick it up.
yeah i wish it was a requirement that you’re nerdy enough to build your own computer or at least be able to install an OS before joining SWE industry. the non-nerds are too political and can’t figure out basic shit.
You should if you want to be a science writer or academic, which lets be honest is a better comparison here. If your job involves latin for names and descriptions then you probably should take at least a year or two of latin if you don’t want to make mistakes here and there out of ignorance.
Our IT team would rather sit in a room with developers and solve those problems, than deal with hundreds of non-techs who struggle to add a chrome extension or make their printer icon show up.
As a developer I can freely admit that without the operations people the software I develop would not run anywhere but on my laptop.
I know as much about hardware as a cook knows about his stove and the plates the food is served on – more than the average person but waaaay less than the people producing and maintaining them.
I know this is not everyone and there’re some unicorns out there but after working with hiring managers for decades i can’t help but see cheap programmers when I see Devops. It’s ether Ops people that think they are programmers or programmers that are not good enough to get hired as Software Engineers outright at higher pay. It’s like when one person is both they can do both but not great at ether one. Devops works best when it’s a team of both dev and Ops working together. IMO
As a devops manager that’s been both, it depends on the group. Ideally a devops group has a few former devs and a few former systems guys.
Honestly, the best devops teams have at least one guy that’s a liaison with IT who is primarily a systems guy but reports to both systems and devops. Why?
It gets you priority IT tickets and access while systems trusts him to do it right. He’s like the crux of every good devops team. He’s an IT hire paid for by the devops team budget as an offering in exchange for priority tickets.
It very much depends on how close to hardware they are.
If someone is working with C# or JavaScript, they are about as knowledgeable with hardware as someone working in Excel(I know this statement is tantamount to treason but as far as hardware is concerned it’s true
But if you are working with C or rust or god forbid drivers. You probably know more than the average IT professional you might even have helped correct hardware issues.
As a developer I like to mess with everything. Currently we are doing an infrastructure migration and I had to do a lot of non-development stuff to make it happen.
Honesly I find it really usefull (but not necessary) to have some understanding of the underying processes of the code I’m working with.
Simple example, our NASes are EMC2. The devs over at the company that does the software say they’re garbage, we should change them.
Mind you, these things have been running for 10 years straight 24/7, under load most of the time, and we’ve only swapped like 2 drives, total… but no, they’re garbage 🤦…
I work on a team with mainly infrastructure and operations. As one of the only people writing code on the team. I have to appreciate what IT support does to keep everything moving. I don’t know why so many programmers have to get a chip on their shoulder.
In my experience a lot of IT people are unaware of anything outside of their bubble. It’s a big problem in a lot of technical industries with people who went to school to learn a trade.
“IT people” here, operations guy who keeps the lights on for that software.
It’s been my experience developers have no idea how the hardware works, but STRONGLY believe they know more then me.
Devops is also usually more dev than ops, and it shows in the availability numbers.
Absolutely agree, as a developer.
The devops team set up a pretty effective setup for our devops pipeline that allows us to scale infinity. Which would be great if we had infinite resources.
We’re hitting situations where the solution is to throw more hardware at it.
And IT cannot provision tech fast enough within budget for any of this. So devs are absolutely suffering right now.
I’ve always found this weird. I think to be a good software developer it helps to know what’s happening under the hood when you take an action. It certainly helps when you want to optimize memory access for speed etc.
I genuinely do know both sides of the coin. But I do know that the majority of my fellow developers at work most certainly have no clue about how computers work under the hood, or networking for example.
I find it weird because, to be good at software development (and I don’t mean, following what the computer science methodology tells you, I mean having an idea of the best way to translate an idea into a logical solution that can be applied in any programming language, and most importantly how to optimize your solution, for example in terms of memory access etc) requires an understanding of the underlying systems. That if you write software that is sending or receiving network packets it certainly helps to understand how that works, at least to consider the best protocols to use.
But, it is definitely true.
There’s so many layers of abstractions that it becomes impossible to know everything.
Years ago, I dedicated a lot of time understanding how bytes travel from a server into your router into your computer. Very low-level mastery.
That education is now trivia, because cloud servers, cloudflare, region points, edge-servers, company firewalls… All other barriers that add more and more layers of complexity that I don’t have direct access to but can affect the applications I build. And it continues to grow.
Add this to the pile of updates to computer languages, new design patterns to learn, operating system and environment updates…
This is why engineers live alone on a farm after they burn out.
It’s not feasible to understand everything under the hood anymore. What’s under the hood grows faster than you can pick it up.
yeah i wish it was a requirement that you’re nerdy enough to build your own computer or at least be able to install an OS before joining SWE industry. the non-nerds are too political and can’t figure out basic shit.
This is like saying before you can be a writer, you need to understand latin and the history of language.
You should if you want to be a science writer or academic, which lets be honest is a better comparison here. If your job involves latin for names and descriptions then you probably should take at least a year or two of latin if you don’t want to make mistakes here and there out of ignorance.
Before you can be a writer, you need to sharpen your own pencil.
20 year IT guy and I second this. Developers tend to be more troublesome than the manager wanting a shared folder for their team.
Rough and that sucks for your organization.
Our IT team would rather sit in a room with developers and solve those problems, than deal with hundreds of non-techs who struggle to add a chrome extension or make their printer icon show up.
Yup. Programmers who have only ever been programmers tend to act like god’s gift to this world.
As a developer I can freely admit that without the operations people the software I develop would not run anywhere but on my laptop.
I know as much about hardware as a cook knows about his stove and the plates the food is served on – more than the average person but waaaay less than the people producing and maintaining them.
I know this is not everyone and there’re some unicorns out there but after working with hiring managers for decades i can’t help but see cheap programmers when I see Devops. It’s ether Ops people that think they are programmers or programmers that are not good enough to get hired as Software Engineers outright at higher pay. It’s like when one person is both they can do both but not great at ether one. Devops works best when it’s a team of both dev and Ops working together. IMO
As a devops manager that’s been both, it depends on the group. Ideally a devops group has a few former devs and a few former systems guys.
Honestly, the best devops teams have at least one guy that’s a liaison with IT who is primarily a systems guy but reports to both systems and devops. Why?
It gets you priority IT tickets and access while systems trusts him to do it right. He’s like the crux of every good devops team. He’s an IT hire paid for by the devops team budget as an offering in exchange for priority tickets.
But in general, you’re absolutely right.
Am I the only guy that likes doing devops thatbhas both dev and ops experience and insight? What’s with silosing oneself?
It very much depends on how close to hardware they are.
If someone is working with C# or JavaScript, they are about as knowledgeable with hardware as someone working in Excel(I know this statement is tantamount to treason but as far as hardware is concerned it’s true
But if you are working with C or rust or god forbid drivers. You probably know more than the average IT professional you might even have helped correct hardware issues.
Long story short it depends.
As a developer I like to mess with everything. Currently we are doing an infrastructure migration and I had to do a lot of non-development stuff to make it happen.
Honesly I find it really usefull (but not necessary) to have some understanding of the underying processes of the code I’m working with.
Could you give an example of something related to hardware that most developers don’t know about?
Simple example, our NASes are EMC2. The devs over at the company that does the software say they’re garbage, we should change them.
Mind you, these things have been running for 10 years straight 24/7, under load most of the time, and we’ve only swapped like 2 drives, total… but no, they’re garbage 🤦…
Accurate!
Developers are frequently excited by the next hot thing or how some billionaire tech companies operate.
I’m guilty of seeing something that was last updated in 2019 and having a look of disgust.
I work on a team with mainly infrastructure and operations. As one of the only people writing code on the team. I have to appreciate what IT support does to keep everything moving. I don’t know why so many programmers have to get a chip on their shoulder.
In my experience a lot of IT people are unaware of anything outside of their bubble. It’s a big problem in a lot of technical industries with people who went to school to learn a trade.