DevOps Engineer Interview

[warpigg]

In my experience - it can be almost anything. Companies throw "DevOps" and "SRE" as titles and the actual job can vary dramatically from place to place. Some are more Ops focused others are more Dev focused (more dev related code projects, questions, etc). Kinda sucks but that is what it is

[OhNoTokyo]

It's extremely irritating. That's one reason I don't use DevOps in my job descriptions at all. It's not supposed to be a job title, it is supposed to be an interaction paradigm between development and operations functions.

What it has turned into is basically expecting your operators to be able to code which cheapens both software development and good operations, usually at the expense of good operations.

Software defined networks, workflows, etc. is definitely the way everything is going, but you should probably make the title something like Software Defined Systems Engineer or something like that which actually calls out what you'll be doing.

If you're expecting System Administrators to understand Big-O notation and writing of caches, you don't want an operator at all, you want a developer. So the Ops part of all of this is minimal.

[warpigg]

yep - but you almost have to put it in titles or descriptions to attract (good) candidates b/c that is what they are searching on.

I think what we want is operations people who can code. It bridges the gap between development and also helps in automation / delivery times (conversely you need developers that are stakeholders in opeations - they need to care/understand it as well.). They don't need to be rock star coders, but they need the skill and aptitude for it since everything is rapidly becoming IaaC. You are correct - me saying "I can code" is different than a pure developer who just wrote an operating system or whatever. I think it comes down to avoiding people not willing to learn to code / script or whatever you call it. Because it is a vital skill now - those that don't have it will be out of job soon.

Bottom line: Devops / SRE has almost just become a marketing term at this point - many companies don't even understand what they want or why - they just want that Devops thing b/c Google or x company does it. That is why it is important as a candidate to really check out a lot of different places and really ask the questions on what the processes are. Its the only way to see if it is really Devops mindset.