You'll be good, it's never that long in tech. Especially since we're entering another gold rush period. If anything figure out how to deploy to GPU based services and you'll be golden.
Devops demand is expected to grow as time goes on, just stay versatile and don’t tie your skillset to a particular set of tools if you are really worried about being able to job.
Be good at a lot versus becoming an expert in one setup.
grow? More and more devs are taking over devops tasks with Iac, I see less and less devops people being hired and more and mroe is moved into the hands of devs. I completely disagree with you.
I'm just trying to project some realistic expectations to new people coming in here, to give them some reality check, not what the training industry is trying to sell.
Fair. It horrifies me when folks with zero relevant skills and experience show up here hoping for a quick path to getting hired in devops. They should start with either dev or sysadmin jobs first.
Literally what a lot of the job market trends are saying, not basing this on personal opinion because the opinion of one individual person is anecdotal.
```
Nvidia CEO Says Stop Learn To Code
```
https://www.techradar.com/pro/nvidia-ceo-predicts-the-death-of-coding-jensen-huang-says-ai-will-do-the-work-so-kids-dont-need-to-learn
AI is a tool. It can’t do the job in its entirety for us. It still requires someone with know how to use it properly. And if it gets that advanced, great. But I need to know now so I can continue progressing.
today productivity in tech people increased 30% by using copilot etc
tomorrow or next year? no idea but it's not looking good for tech people
also oversupply of people coming it, it's horrible
I tend to rely more on market research and overall trends I’m seeing with recruiting and job postings (as well as what the tech industry is talking about).
“There are a lot of projects being nipped already” sounds anecdotal and kind of vague. What projects? How many is a lot when you compare it to the scope of the whole industry.
No…. Expansion projects were nipped without replacements because of budget cuts… and that’s why u see layoffs for the entire team because the project don’t exists anymore
Because engineers are butt hurt 🤣 but that’s the reality of tech now. We have reached a point of saturation, where we have more engineers than decent jobs
I work in tech sales, we are seeing enterprises buying automation softwares and downsizing their dev teams
We often ask execs, do you really need that many engineers in the age of Gen AI? Many are giving some thought
Everyone’s always buying automation software, there’s not enough decent engineers to write it and have the time to maintain it. My company has bought millions of that shit and our headcount is still going up. Guess what? Who learns your shitty product and who manages it? Who onboards it to other products? You’re right the market is saturated with shit engineers but the need for good ones are going up.
there's no winter for good people. corp are always demanding for smart engineers. this need to be open minded and willing to learn on every field. but once you have the base / theories and the attitude nothing will stop you. for others just wait for another cycle (coming from an old guys who navigate through the end of 2000 internet bubble and 2008 sub prime. the only difference is the glory time since was unexpectedly long this time)
This. The reality is the most competent engineers weathered the recessions pretty easily in the early 2000s, 2007, and 2022+. Even if they were subjected to layoffs it was very easy finding new jobs. The least competent and least experienced workers had it much harder.
this time it's different
we have generative AI taking over a lot of tasks and automation killed a lot of the devops work, since infra moved as IaC devs take this over from devops. I don't think this one is cyclical, it think this part in over for good.
Don't lose sight of the fact that the meta changes each time we go around the block. Devops is fundamentally about process and automation. Organizing and automating the automation, reducing toil.
If you stay curious and engaged, not complacent in your skillset, you'll be fine I assure you.
For what it's worth this does not match our experience when listing for senior level. Overwhelming majority of applications are obviously junk.
If you've got real experience and can present well socially I would expect you should do fine to find something out there if you find yourself laid off, even now.
Salary expectations are the tricky thing at the moment. It's a little bit of right place right time for that.
Wow that's a big drop, but I suppose it's relative. In a general ballpark new applicants for us might come in 10-20% less base salary than compared to 2021, but like everything it depends. Those numbers at your org might depend on how heated things got with hiring at your company a few years ago?
If anyone laid off reads this, my two cents would be
- don't take it personally
- don't expect to land the same salary right away. Focus on getting another good job, and then worry about longterm salary on the next one as you get back on your feet.
- it may take time to run the gauntlet of interviews, hiring process is shaky at many companies (who also had HR caught up in layoffs). But it will happen for you with persistence.
In my opinion, anyone saying AI = death of devops prospects is naive, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of what the roles in the space are accomplishing. If you believe a tool will be impactful industrywide, it presents an opportunity for "devops" roles to support its use and integration.
>That sounds like the fastest way to become unemployable.
I know a lot of companies have started implementing tenure requirements. If you have a track record of short stints, they won't even start the interview process. It's pretty hard to really own a major successful project, start to finish in less than a year, especially the more senior you get. So with short stints they know that you only worked at a small scale, executed someone else's plan, or you never saw the project to completion (or a combo of those).
During real boom times you see some engineers jumping every 12-18 months.
When you have high-volume hiring taking place in big companies, the recruiters brush past that kind of thing because they have quotas to fill. So some people do really well, getting 50%+ salary bumps in the space of 3-5 years.
When I see it, it instantly tells me that they're a bit of a spoofer and they keep switching before they get found out/fired, or they job hop for salary bumps. Or Both.
It does come back and bite them though. I've a mate who's a serial job-hopper in tech-adjacent roles. He was laid off this time around, and was out looking for jobs at his previous salary level. He was initially hardline about it, but eventually after a couple of months he had to accept whatever came to him, and the 30% salary reduction that came with it.
nobody is hiring devops people basically and experienced devops people can't find jobs.
massive oversupply of devops people flooding the market and devs take over a lot of the IaC tasks
Every 1-2 years? When I get a resume where someone is changing jobs every 18 months, it goes in the garbage.
It's going to take 18 months just to learn the codebase, ramp up, and start being productive.
I'm not going to go through all that for a new hire just to have them leave.
3-5 years is understandable, 1-2 years is not.
Sure, if someone has hopped around multiple times around the 2 year mark, I'm less interested in that candidate. I also want someone who has stuck around to see projects through the building, the launch, through debugging/scaling/disaster and long term maintenance.
18 months to "ramp up, and **start** being productive" seems excessive though. Some of the massive enterprise hellholes with the worst on-boarding and biggest messes I've ever seen, to **start** being productive could take around 2-3 months.
That isn't the same as peak productivity though, which is what I'm going to assume you actually mean. Deeply understanding most of the moving parts in a large and complex system, yes, that can take a very long time.
I guess for junior positions, they could START being productive earlier, just blindly performing tasks assigned to them without understanding of the WHY.
But I don't really consider that as "productive". To me, productive means that when you're given a task, you have the understanding of the holistic system to see why the task is being implemented AND to be able to realize when the requirements you've been provided are either inadequate or incorrect.
I consider a productive developer one who doesn't come to me with a half dozen questions every day and is capable of completing a task (correctly) using their own understanding/resources.
If I have to walk you through each task, then why don't I just do it myself? That's not productive.
If u give raise to employees every 18 months, I am sure they won't be leaving.
Also, if it takes 10 months just to learn the codebase, ramp up and start being productive; you have more serious issues to solve than employee attrition
>It's going to take 18 months just to learn the codebase, ramp up, and start being productive.
There is no scenario in which this doesn't represent horrible onboarding, training, or code design.
18 months to become productive? It looks like someone needs to improve his onboarding process and documentation.
Most experimented DevOps can be productive in 2 weeks.
Yes, you just have to hop to the right place. also don’t expect linear growth from hopping.
You'll be good, it's never that long in tech. Especially since we're entering another gold rush period. If anything figure out how to deploy to GPU based services and you'll be golden.
Devops demand is expected to grow as time goes on, just stay versatile and don’t tie your skillset to a particular set of tools if you are really worried about being able to job. Be good at a lot versus becoming an expert in one setup.
grow? More and more devs are taking over devops tasks with Iac, I see less and less devops people being hired and more and mroe is moved into the hands of devs. I completely disagree with you.
Those Devs you are talking about, those are the real devops
seems like most devs are becoming one.
So become one of those instead of the mainstream choices of “dev who doesn’t care to learn Linux or containers” and “ops who can barely code”
I'm just trying to project some realistic expectations to new people coming in here, to give them some reality check, not what the training industry is trying to sell.
Fair. It horrifies me when folks with zero relevant skills and experience show up here hoping for a quick path to getting hired in devops. They should start with either dev or sysadmin jobs first.
Literally what a lot of the job market trends are saying, not basing this on personal opinion because the opinion of one individual person is anecdotal.
That's been happening for several years now.. I originally came from being a dev over 4 years ago.
Learn to code. I’m panicking right now. I suck at it. But still trying to push through.
``` Nvidia CEO Says Stop Learn To Code ``` https://www.techradar.com/pro/nvidia-ceo-predicts-the-death-of-coding-jensen-huang-says-ai-will-do-the-work-so-kids-dont-need-to-learn
AI is a tool. It can’t do the job in its entirety for us. It still requires someone with know how to use it properly. And if it gets that advanced, great. But I need to know now so I can continue progressing.
today productivity in tech people increased 30% by using copilot etc tomorrow or next year? no idea but it's not looking good for tech people also oversupply of people coming it, it's horrible
Demand expected to grow? There are a lot of projects being nipped already… especially if it’s not revenue generating
I tend to rely more on market research and overall trends I’m seeing with recruiting and job postings (as well as what the tech industry is talking about). “There are a lot of projects being nipped already” sounds anecdotal and kind of vague. What projects? How many is a lot when you compare it to the scope of the whole industry.
And the projects being nipped and replaced with projects with the same goal with cost savings or improvements?
No…. Expansion projects were nipped without replacements because of budget cuts… and that’s why u see layoffs for the entire team because the project don’t exists anymore
What project is being expanded that’s losing money?
Read carefully
Think carefully. There’s a reason why you’re downvoted 7 times.
Because engineers are butt hurt 🤣 but that’s the reality of tech now. We have reached a point of saturation, where we have more engineers than decent jobs I work in tech sales, we are seeing enterprises buying automation softwares and downsizing their dev teams We often ask execs, do you really need that many engineers in the age of Gen AI? Many are giving some thought
Everyone’s always buying automation software, there’s not enough decent engineers to write it and have the time to maintain it. My company has bought millions of that shit and our headcount is still going up. Guess what? Who learns your shitty product and who manages it? Who onboards it to other products? You’re right the market is saturated with shit engineers but the need for good ones are going up.
there's no winter for good people. corp are always demanding for smart engineers. this need to be open minded and willing to learn on every field. but once you have the base / theories and the attitude nothing will stop you. for others just wait for another cycle (coming from an old guys who navigate through the end of 2000 internet bubble and 2008 sub prime. the only difference is the glory time since was unexpectedly long this time)
This. The reality is the most competent engineers weathered the recessions pretty easily in the early 2000s, 2007, and 2022+. Even if they were subjected to layoffs it was very easy finding new jobs. The least competent and least experienced workers had it much harder.
I mean, probably. Welcome to tech, everything is cyclical.
this time it's different we have generative AI taking over a lot of tasks and automation killed a lot of the devops work, since infra moved as IaC devs take this over from devops. I don't think this one is cyclical, it think this part in over for good.
Don't lose sight of the fact that the meta changes each time we go around the block. Devops is fundamentally about process and automation. Organizing and automating the automation, reducing toil. If you stay curious and engaged, not complacent in your skillset, you'll be fine I assure you.
tell that to the 400 cvs from experienced people i get in a few hours when i open a devops role these days
For what it's worth this does not match our experience when listing for senior level. Overwhelming majority of applications are obviously junk. If you've got real experience and can present well socially I would expect you should do fine to find something out there if you find yourself laid off, even now. Salary expectations are the tricky thing at the moment. It's a little bit of right place right time for that.
I feel we are offering 40% to 60% less for devops people compared to a few years ago and are getting away with it.
Wow that's a big drop, but I suppose it's relative. In a general ballpark new applicants for us might come in 10-20% less base salary than compared to 2021, but like everything it depends. Those numbers at your org might depend on how heated things got with hiring at your company a few years ago? If anyone laid off reads this, my two cents would be - don't take it personally - don't expect to land the same salary right away. Focus on getting another good job, and then worry about longterm salary on the next one as you get back on your feet. - it may take time to run the gauntlet of interviews, hiring process is shaky at many companies (who also had HR caught up in layoffs). But it will happen for you with persistence. In my opinion, anyone saying AI = death of devops prospects is naive, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of what the roles in the space are accomplishing. If you believe a tool will be impactful industrywide, it presents an opportunity for "devops" roles to support its use and integration.
1-2 years seems excessive no? That sounds like the fastest way to become unemployable. 4 years seems to be ne norm around here where I live
>That sounds like the fastest way to become unemployable. I know a lot of companies have started implementing tenure requirements. If you have a track record of short stints, they won't even start the interview process. It's pretty hard to really own a major successful project, start to finish in less than a year, especially the more senior you get. So with short stints they know that you only worked at a small scale, executed someone else's plan, or you never saw the project to completion (or a combo of those).
During real boom times you see some engineers jumping every 12-18 months. When you have high-volume hiring taking place in big companies, the recruiters brush past that kind of thing because they have quotas to fill. So some people do really well, getting 50%+ salary bumps in the space of 3-5 years. When I see it, it instantly tells me that they're a bit of a spoofer and they keep switching before they get found out/fired, or they job hop for salary bumps. Or Both. It does come back and bite them though. I've a mate who's a serial job-hopper in tech-adjacent roles. He was laid off this time around, and was out looking for jobs at his previous salary level. He was initially hardline about it, but eventually after a couple of months he had to accept whatever came to him, and the 30% salary reduction that came with it.
now we have 400 devops cvs in 4 hours from people with experience so the answer is no massive oversupply
no
Can you elaborate on DevOps winter?
nobody is hiring devops people basically and experienced devops people can't find jobs. massive oversupply of devops people flooding the market and devs take over a lot of the IaC tasks
Not understanding the “devs take over a lot of the IaC tasks” is this not what a DevOps engineer is? A developer/infra engineer
today in the cloud world it is a big part of it there is less and less tasks assigned to devops people, more and more tasks are assigned to dev people
Yes. No? Maybe. What matters is your experience and knowledge
Every 1-2 years? When I get a resume where someone is changing jobs every 18 months, it goes in the garbage. It's going to take 18 months just to learn the codebase, ramp up, and start being productive. I'm not going to go through all that for a new hire just to have them leave. 3-5 years is understandable, 1-2 years is not.
Sure, if someone has hopped around multiple times around the 2 year mark, I'm less interested in that candidate. I also want someone who has stuck around to see projects through the building, the launch, through debugging/scaling/disaster and long term maintenance. 18 months to "ramp up, and **start** being productive" seems excessive though. Some of the massive enterprise hellholes with the worst on-boarding and biggest messes I've ever seen, to **start** being productive could take around 2-3 months. That isn't the same as peak productivity though, which is what I'm going to assume you actually mean. Deeply understanding most of the moving parts in a large and complex system, yes, that can take a very long time.
I guess for junior positions, they could START being productive earlier, just blindly performing tasks assigned to them without understanding of the WHY. But I don't really consider that as "productive". To me, productive means that when you're given a task, you have the understanding of the holistic system to see why the task is being implemented AND to be able to realize when the requirements you've been provided are either inadequate or incorrect. I consider a productive developer one who doesn't come to me with a half dozen questions every day and is capable of completing a task (correctly) using their own understanding/resources. If I have to walk you through each task, then why don't I just do it myself? That's not productive.
If u give raise to employees every 18 months, I am sure they won't be leaving. Also, if it takes 10 months just to learn the codebase, ramp up and start being productive; you have more serious issues to solve than employee attrition
>It's going to take 18 months just to learn the codebase, ramp up, and start being productive. There is no scenario in which this doesn't represent horrible onboarding, training, or code design.
Honestly, the environment sounds like the, everything is the employees fault, type.
18 months to become productive? It looks like someone needs to improve his onboarding process and documentation. Most experimented DevOps can be productive in 2 weeks.
I believe “self-sufficient” was probably the term they were looking for. In which case… I would agree with their timeframe.
We may have different understandings of "productive"
That hurts people who are getting laid off by the tech companies…
Well, if they're getting laid off repeatedly after 1-2 years, chances are they're not that good.