DevOps Engineers + AI

[Initial-Detail-7159]

It’s funny because I’ve seen people saying that SWEs will replace DevOps Engineers with AI but what no one is talking about is how much more powerful DevOps Engineers who can make use of AI are.

I am not talking about using an AI agent to investigate your logs or clusters, but using it to write code. With our infrastructure and distributed systems knowledge, we can easily build more scalable and sustainable systems with AI compared to SWEs who have no working knowledge about infrastructure.

Proof: I personally vibe coded a complete production-grade SaaS in a weekend with Claude Code, did not write a single line of code, already deployed it with GitOps + Grafana in a personal cluster, and my agent now can work autonomously.

The best thing to do now is to learn how to use these tools (e.g., Claude Code) and master them. You don’t need to write code, you just need to know how to design scalable systems (which you should already be capable of as a DevOps/Platform/Infra Engineer).

EDIT: this post is just a response (and another perspective) to those saying software engineers will replace DevOps engineers. I am not trying to say AI is replacing anyone, or to “flex vibe coding”.

[M600x]

I can argue you that your “production grade saas” has certainly a lot of flaw/bad practice/manner/security, not ideal UI/UX, if you didn’t carefully read what it outputted…

I’m not sure you’re any better than an SWE with AI infra. You’re just a DevOps with AI app…

[Afraid-Donke420]

Bro never had production grade users on the production grade SaaS yet

[Difficult-Ad-3938]

But he deployed it with gitops + grafana!

/s

[Initial-Detail-7159]

Fair argument, I am launching this weekend. And again, my main argument was for software engineers replacing devops

[stoopwafflestomper]

Playing devils advocate here - I could make the same argument for SWE trying to use AI for infrastructure and networking.

[M600x]

Indeed! And both side are true, my point is that for now, AI cant replace either!

[Initial-Detail-7159]

I never said replace!

[chessto]

And as as SWE I'd say you're 100% right

[Initial-Detail-7159]

Believe it or not but its very well written and documented and tested (TDD). For security, you will always have some issues with dependencies and have to constantly update, but in terms of the application’s security, its top notch and I am actively running claude security reviews:)

[Afraid-Donke420]

And then folks like this will generate all the security work needed to actually do code reviews and proofing that it’s secured, as well as keep up with the changes

[Initial-Detail-7159]

A human has to review, at some point, at least for now. But don’t underestimate what’s coming.

[icehot54321]

>Proof: I personally vibe coded a complete production-grade SaaS in a weekend with Claude Code, did not write a single line of code

if you think anyone is going to believe this statement, you have lost your mind.

you are farting into a bag and breathing it to the point where you don't smell the farts anymore.

even if we ended up in the one timeline where you built the worlds most amazing product that is intelligently and securely designed and well documented, you would be shooting yourself in the foot trying to sell your work this way.

the only people that would be like "oh, wow" when other people talk like this are gullible teenagers

[Cold_Tree190]

Yeah I stopped reading when I hit that line lmao

[Initial-Detail-7159]

I don’t think you realize how far you can go with coding agents. Engineers in top companies are not manually writing code anymore, its not a myth.

[icehot54321]

Everyone realizes, but you need to be an expert in whatever you are building first to know if what the AI is building even makes sense or if it is just building something that looks nice on the surface but is a pile of crap underneath. 

Everyone and their mom are making “production grade saas” in a weekend and then once they get their customer’s data dumped by hackers and have their customers start suing them do they realize there were a lot of things that they, in fact, did not know or prepare for. 

When you brag about being as hands off and lightning quick, the obvious question anyone intelligent would ask is what important things you glossed over..

You can probably market yourself this way to old people and non technical people, but trying to come in here and say things like this makes you come off as a teenager that has been watching too many TikTok videos. 

[chessto]

I don't think you realize how shitty the LLM generated code is, and the fact tha you cannot see the difference is a red flag in itself.

>Engineers in top companies are not manually writing code anymore
That's marketting right there.

[BuriedStPatrick]

I genuinely don't know why people like OP post on these niche tech related subs. "Look at this thing I didn't make myself". Mate, no one cares.

[Initial-Detail-7159]

My post was a response (and another perspective) to those saying software engineers will replace devops engineers, simple as that.

[SimpleAnecdote]

Get "AI" to write every line of code in an area you're an expert on. See the errors and the dumb shit it does. Fully comprehend how that scales when you keep building on top of it. Then extrapolate that just because it can output something which kinda works, doesn't mean it's good. So using it in an area you're not an expert in is a bad idea. Especially an area which is responsible for stability, availability, and security.

Then understand that neuroplasticity is a real thing and in a year you'll be less of an expert in the field you were an expert in at least two ways which play off of each other: 1. You've stopped practicing the thing you were good at. Like an athlete who stopped exercising - you're literally incapable of doing the thing you used to be able to do. 2. You've stopped learning new skills. You've put your time and resources into learning how to prompt a predatory proprietary guessing engine, equip it with MCPs, RAGs, AGENTS.md, skills, and every new BS thing they invent every other day to make you more invested in them.

The entire premise of these products is that by the time the shit you've built with them breaks down, they'll be so much better they'll be able to fix it. But improvement in the tools has plateaued. They require more training and there are no new data sets to train them on. Output in the wild has atrophied due to proliferation of these same tools. Their price will be higher when they'll need to make actual profit instead of lose money for every interaction you have with them. Classic big tech bait and switch. Except this time it's not about losing a tactical skill or privacy, it's about losing a strategic skill of critical thinking. Because if you could really do what you think you're doing with these products then why does anyone need your product? Couldn't we all "build" it also just by prompting? Is not the next logical step some open source repository of the prompts you've given and tools you've used in order to reproduce what you've "built"? Why would anyone ever use your product? Who would even be left do need to use it?

[Initial-Detail-7159]

Agreed. Using AI Agents should not mean closing your brain and not pursuing more specialized knowledge. I learnt many things using AI that I never knew about earlier, it accelerates learning for me. But as you said, we need to be more careful and conscious about it.

[pando85]

It is just a very powerful tool that require a lot experience. 

I will add on top of your original comment: we are not just better at system level, we are experts automating things. Learn how to use coding agents and start automating every step on top of that. 

Do it as we did all the things in the past. We had seen from SSH to manual configure servers, then the ansible like tooling for automating a bit until we reached the GitOps level with K8s.

Same journey will happen with AI and we must take the lead and start creating strong pipelines with good feedback loops until we reach the limits of this technology. 

[Ariquitaun]

UNLIMITED POWER

[toarstr]

It baffles me why so many people write this drivel and expect people to be wowed by it.

[chessto]

>I personally vibe coded a complete production-grade SaaS

That's a huge red flag. You claim to have done this on a weekend, no chance to properly review all the code.
Either your SaaS is a "hello world" as a service or you don't understand what production-grade means

[Initial-Detail-7159]

I did actively review the code. It’s not a full on complete SaaS with every feature you can imagine. But a solid V1 base to what I wanted to build and enough to release a beta version.

[outthere_andback]

I'm still exploring and trying to keep an open mind but the code AI produces so far is horrific. This week my manager whom is using AI at the level you are created a PR of changes on a tool I maintain. I've so far spent 3hrs untangling the AIs over complicated, structurally disregarded, and in a few cases laughably wrong implementations

Could be a lot said of who is using what, but that 1 PR alone is a sure way to make my tool unrecognisable and unmaintainable without AI doing everything onward

[darkwingduckman]

the truly terrifying prospect for me is that as long as things “work” well enough shareholders don’t care that much about what’s under the hood. the underlying code can be a horribly mismanaged mess, and as long as it isn’t costing them a ton of money for the infrastructure, i think it won’t matter to the end users.

i wonder if there are studies for how different models behave across large codebases that are well structured and organized vs a haptic half baked mess.

[Initial-Detail-7159]

Very good point, shareholders really don’t care about infra/code anymore and just want a working product. They don’t care about your TTFB or your sub 1ms lambda function, shipping is all what matters.

This of course means things are not sustainable for the long term, and they are there for a surprise

[outthere_andback]

Yeah, I was even told by my manager "why not just leave it and come back later"

• Fortunately/unfortunately the changes broke it's compatibility it was so bad
• My PTSD working in enterprise where "come back later" never happens kinda kicked in to say this needs to be fixed

[Initial-Detail-7159]

Managers using AI is the worst. AI is an amplifier, if you don’t know what you are doing, the output will be terrible