posted 8 years ago
When I consider the new DevOps movement from the first rumblings I heard of it to my first reading of the definition of DevOps to my current job as a DevOps engineer, albeit a self-proclaimed one, I often wonder what the difference is between my position and the positions of engineers past.
I have heard speakers at conferences mention silos in organizations as well as the better approach of cross-functional teams. When I think of DevOps it seems to be more a move towards a more functional team management and workload distribution methodology than it seems to be an individual job description, or even a set of new job descriptions.
Further, it seems to be an acknowledgment by the IT community that for a developer to be successful the developer has to do some systems work and likewise an acknowledgement that for a system administrator to be successful they have to do a bit of programming.
Is DevOps not just a mind-based, thinking correction for the IT industry as a whole?
If not then would that indicate there are situations where the DevOps approach is not appropriate and a more siloed approach is?
With all of this in mind, how measurably different are the job descriptions of a team with DevOps engineers from the teams of the early '90s early '00s or the teams of ten years ago?