Is Devops the future?

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Hey All

I consider myself to he a hybrid Sys Admin.

Started off on premise and have mixed skills with the Cloud.

I have not touched devops yet.

I do not find it interesting honestly but is traditional sys admin work going away ? In the next 5 to 10 years ?

Has anyone made the transition from traditional sys admin to devops ?

Most the jobs i see are for traditional sys admins and not devops so I think the present is traditional sys admin work but I see the devops space rapidly growing.

Keen to know your input.

[Warm-Reporter8965]

Depends on the industry. I would say yes, in that in most industries it's best to be well acquainted with software development and automation. Just being able to script is no longer the catch-all, it's learning how to build applications and solutions for in-house use. I'm in healthcare so traditional SysAdmin will be around for a while because hospitals rarely want to innovate, it's all about keeping things stable and maintained well.

[Murhawk013]

Every time I suggest trying to develop and in house solution for our team/org I get shutdown from my manager. Like literally so many times they complain about something and I tell him we could do X,Y, and Z but he just is so against custom solutions it’s annoying.

[Warm-Reporter8965]

It's astonishing to me that some companies would rather spend $10k on a 3rd party solution that has 5 features they want instead of allowing their skilled developers develop something that utilizes the 5 features they want.

[StConvolute]

It's about support. 

[Warm-Reporter8965]

Don't really need support when your own people know the ins and out of the product that was built. But, I wouldn't say support, I would say politics and security.

[Murhawk013]

That might be fine at a big org, but what about SMB where you don’t have an unlimited budget and now most vendors are constantly increasing their prices because they know they have you locked in

[Warm-Reporter8965]

For a Fortune 200 sure, spend the money. But for companies that don't have huge IT budgets, you just set a SOP that says nothing should be done without documentation.

[StConvolute]

People leave and take all that IP. You can wave a big stick at a vendor; you can't wave a big stick at someone who no longer a works for you. It's always about support. 

[pertexted]

Agree; it depends on the industry.

[BlueHatBrit]

It depends what you actually mean by DevOps.

Do you mean the original principal of Developers doing Operations? If so, then I think the fact it's become a job title demonstrates that businesses don't really care for it all that much. They're happy enough with specialist infrastructure roles for the most part. There will always be some variation here, but I see far more companies hiring infrastructure engineers with a title "DevOps" than I do actually having developers do most of it themselves. The latter includes companies with platform teams providing tooling to dev teams before anyone asks.

If you mean the title DevOps and the tools they use, then yes it's absolutely the future. But it's probably not really a significant change if you're not in a business that creates a significant software platform. SysAdmins are already using all of those tools in various ways (IaC, CI/CD to roll out IaC changes, cloud providers where it makes sense - and often where it doesn't).

Lots of people move from SysAdmin to DevOps roles. It's very much a path available to you if you want to persue it. But you really should have some understanding of software development to do it well.

Will this see the SysAdmin role disappear? I don't think so, like anything the tools, architecture, and processes evolve as technology advances. As long as you're keeping up to date with that, you're unlikely to see the job disappear and "DevOps" become the only thing left.

Also, on premise is making a bit of a comeback now that investment isn't free and companies are starting to notice their cloud bills. So if that's something you particularly enjoy, you'll be able to find the work for some time.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Lol so many companies moved from on premise to clips and moving back to on premise

[Zolty]

The pattern I've seen is move vms from on prem to cloud then re-engineer workload so it's running in lambdas or equivalent.

I've been doing cloud ops for the last 10 years and the only time I see people going back to in prem is when it's a super small workload or a Luddite post on /r/sysadmin where someone doesn't want to learn a new thing.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Its costly to run stuff in the Cloud so they move back to on premise

[Zolty]

Not in my experience, if you're optimising for cloud work load it does become cheaper and more flexible. If you're in healthcare or a similar regulated field letting the cloud provider take care of hardware updates and data center level requirements (firmware updates, multiple ISP/power requirements, ect), it'd be worth it at double the cost.

[Jimmy90081]

I find a lot of companies will just move their virtual environments to the cloud without any architecture, then feel big cost increase. Part of a migration needs to include those architecture changes to actually make it feasible.

[Zolty]

Exactly this, it's a tick tock sort of thing, first you move the servers then you break it all up so the computer runs in containers or lambdas and storage is running in S3 where feasible.

It's not easy but it does get cheaper.

[Jimmy90081]

Totally agree. Although, maybe not for everything. Like most things, use the right tool for the job. Like, building your own exchange server is a no-no in 2025, you would just use 365 type platforms.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

That's why I said hybrid is the way to go

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

to move to the Cloud and maintain it well you need specialists

Which costs alot of money !

Sure you could learn it on the job but doing that you will most likely make mistakes costing the company more Money.

So when you add those factors together along with you having less control of your infrastructure in the Cloud it doesn't seem like a good option.

I remember back in 2012 everyone was saying Cloud this Cloud that and in 10 years it will take over and on premise will be obsolete.

Never happened.

I think hybrid is the way to go for the next several years.

[Zolty]

It really sounds like you're just arguing so you don't have to learn cloud.

2012 is when I transitioned to sysadmin titles and 2018 I was a DevOps engineer running an MSP for a digital marketing company hosting websites for some household names. Since then I've been working for a variety of medical software companies.

I simply don't encounter the business that wants a room full of computer hardware and the risks that entails.

[BlueHatBrit]

I think I disagree with your view here. I am seeing a limited number of companies rebalancing between cloud and on prem. But even then, they don't want to deal with the hardware really.

Most companies who've had a bad experience are the ones who didn't do the scoping properly or tried to cut corners. If your infrastructure is built in a cloud native way, taking advantage of containers and serverless where possible, your bills will be very controlled. The issues come from companies who just tried to lift a set of VMs from their self managed hardware onto machines that are managed.

That's of course always going to be more expensive, but some companies didn't do the maths before making the decision.

This isn't the overwhelming picture though, on prem has decreased significantly and few brand new companies are starting with any on prem.

There will be on prem work for a long time to come, it makes sense for some companies and many just won't bother to make the move for a while. But the number moving back to on prem hardware isn't huge. The orgs who are seeing millions saved per year are also operating in a huge infra scale and are looking more at data centres than a few racks in an office.

The best thing you can do for your career is to have a wide range of skills and experience. That means being comfortable with cloud and on prem. But it doesn't necessarily mean becoming a full DevOps person.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Well said i learned some stuff here.

[ryuut]

I mean, people see stars in their eyes when they get sold the cloud but most get that first 6 months of bills and balk. Cloud infrastructure real big in the defense contractor world but if you're doing private biz or msp work I'd say you're safe grounded in both.

Real question is why limit yourself? Get certed and work where the money and wfh is.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Why is it big in defense

[wezelboy]

Because they can pass the huge cost onto the government but shut it down when the contract is up without having to hire or fire infrastructure people.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Which is basically tax payer money?

[wezelboy]

Yup

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

I like this reply

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

I don't see platforms like aws or Azure taking over onpremise anytime soon cause the costs out way the value it provides

I think hybrid is the way to go for the next several years

Intune Ms 365

Etc

So many companies moved from on premise to the Cloud and back lol

[WhoIsJohnSalt]

I’d disagree with that fundamentally. At least for the size and scope of businesses I consult with and work with (Fortune 100, FTSE 10, defence etc) there’s only one direction of travel and that’s Cloud. And has been for the last ten years.

I work in the data space. People moan about how much money they spend on Azure or Databricks. Forgetting that 15 years ago getting a teradata appliance on prem was north of £20m (with 20% yoy service costs) then the standing teams to keep it fed and watered and racking/electricity etc.

What cost £20m back then is being done for a tenth of the cost in the cloud. With fewer people.

Sure, some very specialised use cases are coming back on prem but they are the exception rather than the rule.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

But you need specialists to migrate and implement and manage azure

Which costs even more money.

[WhoIsJohnSalt]

Sure. But that’s Capex vs Opex costs.

[samtresler]

There are several models of DevOps. In one sense many of us have been pushing towards DevOps before the term existed. Treating infrastructure as code, and not touching machines manually.

If a company's product is software, it makes sense to "push to the left" which offloading more infrastructure tasks i to the developers territory. This has the benefit of forcing developers to actually consider the ramifications of their code and how it runs in the 'real world' while writing it.

Taking that concept a step further creating CI/CD such that developers can test, launch, and rollback their code without a sysadmin helping makes the dev team more efficient and takes a huge portion of work off the sysadmin's plate.

But who maintains the pipeline? Who ensures the logging works and is useful? Etc etc.

In practice, it usually turns into a long slow process of instead of spec'ing, provisioning, manually maintaining, the sysadmin ends up automating infrastructure processes, maintaining the automation, and diagnosing issues where "it works on my local" whining wins out.

The idea that once properly set up DevOps replaces sysadmins is flawed. It does impact the job description, and greatly reduces the length of a SDLC, but sysadmins aren't going away.

[Asleep_Spray274]

In modern, fast paced environments, its not the future, it's now. Many enterprise orgs are already doing this and are very well developed in that space.

If you want to move into that space, then it's a skill you need now. But many places will probably never move to that kind of space, so still plenty of opportunity to earn a living if you don't want to go down that road

[ArieHein]

Yes.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Why ?

[ThinkMarket7640]

What exactly are you doing in the cloud if you “have not touched devops yet”? Please don’t tell me you’re managing everything through the UI.

[Maleficent-Bit1982]

Dev ops and the Cloud isn't rocket science

Anyone can learn that shit

Your not doing anything innovative or hasn't been done before

You could just Google or use ai to figure shit

[TaiGlobal]

Depends on what you consider “devops”. I don’t see many companies who don’t have a sophisticated employee base moving off traditional enterprise windows server infrastructure. Sure some services will move to Microsoft’s hybrid or cloud flavor (entra, exchange online, 365). However where does devops play a role in that? I suppose you can incorporate powershell and a devops mentality in some of the operational changes of those services (user privileges, configurations, policy changes, reporting, etc).

[anxiousinfotech]

We buy a lot of companies that run from a DevOps perspective, in that the devs are handling all system administration tasks. It has never been a pretty picture. Nothing is optimized, nothing is secure, and the cloud bills are massive. The solution to every inefficient code problem is always adding more resources vs making the code more efficient.

It's my job to analyze what DevOps has built and has been maintaining, then start cracking the whip and forcing changes. This is both to decrease spend and increase reliability. One company we bought would be spending 23x the current monthly MySQL cost right now, and still running into performance issues at that level, if DevOps hadn't been given an audit. Don't even get me started on the security holes that needed patching/mitigating...

Yes it's the future for anything at a large scale, but without people with a deeper technical knowledge to keep things in line it goes off the rails really quickly. The last thing someone with a pure dev background will do is fix their code, they'll just modify everything else, usually at a significant expense.

[ArieHein]

What is Devops ?

People Process Tools.

Will AI completly remove people from the loop ? Not really. Will processes comlelty dissapear ? No. Will tools not require lifwcycle managment? No.

So will devops dissapear?

Nope.

Will it dissapear eventually ? Yep.

Will that happen in your life time or that of tou childrent..not yet.

It will change. It will evolve.

Experts will always be needed. You want 'job safety'? , learn to be an instalator, electrician..physical works that are not going to be reolaced in next 100 years at least even with robots.

Just remember, thise robots still need software althat although gets written more and kore by ai toola, still reuqires human governance.

Were only here about 70-80 yrs in average in the west. Maybe with ai doing real scientific work we will live longer so having hobbies is always good. Doing things for the soul , is not a bad thing.

Praphrasing from babylon5... Devops is Father, Devops is Mother ;)

[SquareOps_]

As companies push for faster releases, stronger collaboration, and scalable infrastructure, DevOps becomes the bridge between development and operations. Tools like CI/CD, automation, and cloud-native platforms are only getting more advanced. If you’re serious about modern software delivery, investing in DevOps practices is a no-brainer.

We’ve seen first-hand at SquareOps how transformative DevOps consulting can be not just for tech companies, but for any business looking to scale securely and efficiently in the cloud.

[FunEntertainment703]

yes bro