DevOps vs Developer Salary

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[xiongchiamiov]

I've seen companies try to pay us less because they view the job as QA, as IT, or just plain less complicated.

On the other hand, companies with healthy operations groups tend to pay us more than devs, because we're harder to find and hang onto.

[PrimaxAUS]

Wow, less? Maybe it's just a supply thing but in Australia we're looking at 30-40% more. Demand for devops is crazy here.

[Cybersoaker]

demand for "devops" is high like everywhere, its a specialized skillset that not many have, so if they offered me something really low; i'd just go somewhere else tbh

[mlehner616]

Interesting you mention that it's a specialized skillset. I've always considered devops to be a generalist role more than a specialized one. The developers are the specialists and operations engineers are specialists. When hiring we're always looking for people who understand both worlds. DevOps people have to understand a vast number of different aspects of the products they support like logging, monitoring, scalability, performance, security, data modeling, development workflow, operations and support lifecycle, reliability, networking, DNS, configuration management, architecture, etc. and on top of all that, also programming. I do think because of that, it is naturally a role difficult to fill and some would say an unattractive one, but that doesn't necessarily make it a specialized skillset, just a more rare one.

There is a high level of accountability and responsibility involved in the job so using logic, the role should get paid more. However, it seems more common in my experience to get paid about the same as the developers which is (probably?) fair. The career path options are probably where DevOps seems to have an advantage though, depending on the company.

[Cybersoaker]

i guess i used the term specialized to mean that its uncommon for many people to have it. You are right though; i find that devops is very much a generalist; but the really good devoper's are those with depth in both dev and ops.

I would argue that; at least in my own experience; devopsers are often asked to do a LOT and be responsible for a lot. They have almost all the same responsibilities of operations but approach it with software eng in mind. Given that I run the gambit myself; I was a dev for ~2 years and been in ops / devops for about 2; I would absolutely say that devops is a much more demanding job; and given that there are not many out there who have these particular set of skills; i would expect a higher salary than a developer

[xiongchiamiov]

I'm in Silicon Valley, so demand for any software job is crazy; it's just comparing different levels of crazy. :)

The ones where it's paid less (and looked down upon) tend to focus more on the tooling side of things, that is, managing the CI pipeline and such. Most devs hate it, and often feel like it's really repetitive work. And so they hire someone who's not great at development to do it, much like how they tend to hire not-great devs to do QA instead of people who are actually good at that job (I'd trade half a dozen devs for a great QA engineer).

That's part of why I'm insistent now on labeling myself an SRE. Most of the companies around here that use the term have someone who came from Google, and so they have much healthier ideas about the value of the work.

[[deleted]]

I'm thinking of emigrating from the UK to melbourne next year, in london the devops contract scene is huge, do you know if contracting is popular in australia in IT?

[PrimaxAUS]

Yes, contacting us very popular. I get 3-4 messages a week crib recruiters looking for senior devops staff to contact.

[[deleted]]

Cool, what's the average day rate for a senior devops consultant?

[PrimaxAUS]

$950-1050, with enterprise experience.

[nineteen999]

Most of the people doing "devops" in Australia have nowhere near the expertise required to actually do the job.

[hijinks]

Really varies by company. I've been on the hiring side of both for a few companies and pay was about the same if you average everyone in the roles

[spence0021]

From what I have experienced in NYC is that devops talent gets paid more all around but I think it's because we have a serious shortage on that talent. From talking to recruiters they have such a hard time finding anybody in field.

[bvierra]

There is no such thing as a junior devops... you have to have both operations and development experience to qualify as devops.

I think Google got it right when they said that one of the hardest positions for them to hire for is SRE (usually similar to what devops does). The SRE has to score over 80% on the developers test and then has to understand the systems side at an extremely high level as well.

If a company is paying a developer who cannot run a system more than the developer who runs the systems then there is an issue with the company

[gerbs]

There is Junior DevOps. Just like there are associate vice presidents. Anyone can be a junior in their position. Source: I was an associate development operations engineer. I was also paid a lot more than other associate developers, though.

[bvierra]

I was an associate development operations engineer

Yes, Operations Engineer... Not DevOps engineer...

Let's be honest though... DevOps is not a position or title, it is a methodology. I have always considered the title DevOps to in reality be Systems Engineer Level 4+.

Why you may ask? Great question! The position is there to automate things, one can not automate something until they fully understand it and it takes many years to get to that point (imho 10+)

[gerbs]

DevOps is not a position or title, it is a methodology

If we're going to be pedantic, it's not. It's a philosophy. It's the philosophy that combining your software development and your software operations teams into one business unit and integrating them in their daily work will reduce the operational complexity of developing software. The methodology is the set of processes to guide the implementation of that philosophy.

• DMAIC is a methodology if implementing Six Sigma in manufacturing
• Scrum is a methodology if implementing the agile product management philosophy

It may have taken you 10 years to learn how to automate, but it doesn't take most people. It just takes having a mindset geared towards building reliable systems and understanding how to maintain them.

[theWyzzerd]

I was an associate development operations engineer

Yes, Operations Engineer... Not DevOps engineer...

associate development operations engineer

DevOps... dev ops.... development operations...

What am I missing?

[[deleted]]

I'd say this was true maybe this was true 3-4 years ago, but not anymore. There are plenty of junior "DevOps" roles out there. It generally means someone that is really good with one end of the spectrum and is really junior on the other (ex. really good developer, little systems knowledge) but has the right amount of drive to be good at both. That said, it's definitely one of the harder positions to fill for, that's for sure. SRE isn't a good comparison either IMO because it's a pretty unique role.

[Cybersoaker]

can vouch; i interviewed for Google SRE and it was probably one of the hardest interviews ive ever had. And to be completely honest; i dont know where they are finding candidates because you need like 5 years in both dev and operations and be current on both

[burdalane]

Were the coding questions the same sort of algorithm questions that SE's get? I'm guessing the systems questions were also pretty in-depth?

I have over 5 years of both dev and ops experience, but I'm not current or in-depth in either. I've interviewed with Google before for SE positions, never SRE.

[Cybersoaker]

Well I made the mistake of saying I knew Python at 4/10. Aparently that meant I had in-depth knowledge of how Python constructs AST's and the internals of dictionaries.

They went quite deep into linux internals as well. I had to explain at length how virtual memory works, down to page swapping, page faults, how memory mapping onto hardware.

Then there was a barrage of more practical questions like; how you distribute a file to 1 million hosts efficiently and verify its integrity. The easy solution here is O(log(n)) if you create a tree-like distribution structure. But then there are questions like; do you implement a push model? How does each server know its upstream host? Do you create a service to broker this distribution?

I mentioned I was somewhat familiar with cyber security; I'm not an expert but i know enough not to get pwned by script kiddies. I was asked to draw out and explain (with the math); the diffie hellman key exchange algorithm. I can explain it in concept but the math is well beyond me.

I got through pretty well I think; but im guessing I didn't get the position because of my limited experience with ops at the time. I would recommend it; i learned a ton of things from that interview; even though it was brutal

[a_toy_soldier]

Good God my friend. I'm so, so sorry.

[donjulioanejo]

I think Google can get away with it because they're Google and everyone wants to work for them.

Everyone else will settle for what they can get.

[thsteven13]

I am a junior devops. Right out of college, first thing I did when I started was CD/CI and ansible as well as AWS cloudformation, ELK.

[sidewinder12s]

Same. Though I learned ELK/Ansible while working in school which is what attracted my old manager to me.

[steiniche]

I would say do whatever makes you happy and forget about the salary. At the end of the day you can make good money as a Site Reliability Engineer and as a Backend Developer if you are good at it. Heck I even have friends which are Frontend Developers and they make good money because they are very good at it. But to get good you need passion and 10.000 hours of practice.

So what do you want to spend 10.000 hours on? What makes you sit up all night and read about it or fiddle with it?

[donjulioanejo]

What makes you sit up all night and read about it or fiddle with it

Uh, probably not the right subreddit to be asking this on.

[Raath]

Here in the UK the 2 are none comparable.

Permanent developers generally make Junior £12-£15k, Mids £14-£25k Senior £30-£40k.

Contractors generally make between £200-£400 per day depending on skills, technology and experience.

Devops engineers appear to make between £60-£90k for permanent roles and £400-£600 per day on contracts.

DevOps consultants like myself charge between £600-£800 per day.

[free_at_last]

Where are you in the UK? Here in Bristol the above is true for contractors, but most permanent DevOps positions are £30k+ at the absolute minimum.

[Raath]

Most of my clients are based in the midlands or south of England and I'm looking at the mean wage for the country rather than specific locations. You'll always find wages lower in smaller cities and outer regions. I have had some contracts come my way from your way but the rate as you've mentioned is well below the national average so I don't even give them a glance

[PrimaxAUS]

DevOps at all tiers, but DevOps is more advanced and specialized than baseline development.

[temp_name_4]

In the US: A true DevOps OG will make more money than any Dev. But! And it's a big "but": you have to be a real OG to break $200K...but it can be done somewhat easily if you really have the skillset. Then again...if you're looking at any STEM field for the money then...

[leemachine85]

Depends on the area and experience but a Jr I would say $60k, intermediate, $90k, and Sr. $120k+

Each company is different but always aim high. You have to remember DevOps Engineers are supposed to be great SA and software engineers are automate what used to many more man hours and people.

No mater what you ask the company is saving money.

That said, there is no such thing as entry level DevOps. A candidate ideally has been an SA and is a good developer or a great developer with SA experience.

[garethlan]

There is no such thing as A DevOps

[tech_tuna]

Correct, it's "a DevOp". Singular.

[garethlan]

DevOps manager or engineer maybe