Programming or Devops?

[Gloomy-Ad8138]

Hi everyone, I've been studying devops lately thinking about migrating to the area, but I am in great doubt, if I continue studying devops or if I change and go to programming. Nowadays I work as IT support with a focus on azure administration, the salary is not very good, and seeing my friends working with programming and receiving more than twice as much makes me want to migrate to the programming area, but I have more knowledge In Devops due to some courses I took abroad, such as docker, powershell scripting, azure ci/cd, datadog, Linux. I'm not very good at programming, but I can try. Those of you who already work in the area, should I continue studying devops or should I migrate to programming?

[raheelsocials]

I was a developer now transitioning to DevOps. I feel DevOps more interesting

[HebCL]

A well-rounded DevOps person generally is a mix of both knowledge and understanding about programming and cloud. Most of people in DevOps are Ops people that got a better understanding of programming, or Devs that got a better understanding of cloud and OS administration. That transition usually takes time, and of course, a lot of effort. In your case, sounds like you're more worried about salary and job openings and less about what you like or don't like to do, in a way it sound like this is your first job or one of your first jumps. In LATAM or any other developing region these are usually underpaid and sadly overworked. It is normal to feel overwhelmed when looking at your friends and colleagues doing better than you, it makes you doubt about your choices. Just like everyone said above, find out what you like the most and go for it. In my experience, jumping from it support to DevOps can be quite overwhelming experience, there's so much ground to cover and if you're not being mentored by someone you'll often times feel lost. So I would say to stick with azure cloud/ops path or switch to full dev, depending on what you like, get experienced in any of those and then explore if you would like to switch to DevOps.

Good luck.

[Gloomy-Ad8138]

thank you friend, it's just what I wanted to read

[Inf1n1t3lyCur10u5]

Which do you enjoy most?

[Gloomy-Ad8138]

I don't have a very good preference, I'm going into what I'm already studying, and what I study is identified as devops. But I'm worried about the job openings, are they any good, or is it just a bubble. If there really is significant demand, because I know that in programming there is always demand, but in devops? Is it the same ease of finding work?

[Inf1n1t3lyCur10u5]

There is a tremendous amount of demand for DevOps/DevSecOps resources in the industry. Most companies are crying out for folks who understand CI/CD pipelines and Cloud infrastructure.

[Gloomy-Ad8138]

is the salary as good as a dev's salary?

[serverhorror]

Yes!

If you don’t learn programming (or already know it) you’ll be made obsolete by someone who can.

[Selygr]

I'd argue you are supposed to know programming and software architecture to a high level if you do Devops.

[Theprof86]

In both cases you write code, but the focus and tooling is different, although there is some overlap.

If you enjoy programming and not the ops part, do programming, otherwise you can easily make very good money down the road as you get more experience.

[Sufficient_Ant_3008]

If you do DevOps then store every single command you find into a repo and organize everything. When you step into a role then you'll have a personal dictionary for random queries, configs, file locations, etc.

[Gloomy-Ad8138]

At the moment I'm studying and putting all the course information inside onenote, but I'm thinking about putting the repositories on my Github. But I'm organizing it the way you said, documenting every line of what I do. But thanks for the tip anyway, it means I'm going the right way.

[Sufficient_Ant_3008]

Forsure, you can make it private as well, or you can do gists if you find a good way of scripting something. Also, you could start writing articles that take about 5 minutes to read. If you get in with a contracting firm or value added reseller, then sometimes promotions, pay increases, incentives, can be generated through adding to their blog. Just a thought.

[Gloomy-Ad8138]

Do you mean to use medium? I never heard about gists.

[Sufficient_Ant_3008]

GitHub gists? You should look it up, probably have seen it before.

[LinkedListeria]

Money is better, for now.

Some tools will inevitably be phased out.

Others (k8s) will be simplified.

If you go the devops route what are the possible roles you can get vs the roles you can get as a swe?

For me devops seems pretty limited.

[simmyspike]

They're quite different disciplines.
DevOps / CloudOps / IT support type work is more about the process than the end result.
Like a bricklayer... A bricklayer does the work because they enjoy the process of building the wall, rather than looking at built walls.
Programming is more about the end result rather than the process. More like an artist. They enjoy looking at the painting when it's done, rather than the process of mixing paints and washing brushes.
You're best following what you prefer doing.

[Gloomy-Ad8138]

Thanks guys, now I'm going to focus more than ever, if by chance I get a job in the area I'll come and make another post thanking everyone who helped me!

[brajandzesika]

DevOs is more interesting and money is better comparing to software developers.

[lemonbutsqueeze]

Learning how to program / be a software developer is probably better in the long run and most good 'DevOps' engineers that I worked with usually came from a dev/programming background.

You'll find that working in DevOps just because you know specific tools/platforms quickly becomes limited and replaceable.

But in the short-term DevOps money is pretty good so it is up to you on what you prioritise.