The Death of DevOps Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, but Platform Engineering Is Here To Stay

No, DevOps is not dead, and anyone who says anything different is selling something. However, the kernel of truth beneath the obnoxious hype is this: there is a post-devops era on the horizon, and platform engineering is at its vanguard.

Let’s talk about the tectonic shifts in infrastructure, reliability, and product that are reshuffling the landscape of engineering roles, and in particular, what that means for those of us who have made a career on the operations/devops/SRE/DBRE side of the house.

Transcript

1. @mipsytipsy The Death of DevOps Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, but Platform Engineering Is Here To Stay DevOps Days NYC 2023
2. @mipsytipsy engineer/cofounder/CTO https://charity.wtf real observability for complex systems new!
3. My ❤ belongs to operations engineering… Everything interesting happens in prod The cost of writing software can be rounded down to 0, compared with the cost of maintaining and operating it.
4. “Fuck you” “DevOps is Dead” Stop trying to sell me shit with your shitty clickbait
5. Software doesn’t die.* • COBOL • Java • Javascript • MySQL • Postgres • LISP • emacs • SQL • FreeBSD • Linux • IPv4 • TCP/IP • png • gcc • gdb • elisp • X11 • /proc • grep • sed/awk • O’Reilly books • bash • nginx • haproxy * a list of things that are not dead, all of which are older than devops
6. Warning: You might hate this talk. It’s all about definitions and what terms mean. That’s ok!! I’m not offended if you leave :)
7. “DevOps is dead” is just a stupid thing to say… clickbait marketing🤮 But there is a kernel of truth there DevOps is not eternal. It will be superseded.
8. Operating that software is eternal. Developing software is eternal. but “DevOps”? What happens when there are no more “dev” teams and “ops teams”? 🤔 🤔
9. The long arc of software careers 1990 Write code and run what you write 1995 Devs write code, Ops runs code. Friction ensues. 2007 DevOps emerges; devs + ops Empathy, #hugops blah blah 2023 Write code and run what you write
10. 1. Every engineer writes code. 2. Every engineer runs the code that they write, and operates it in production. These days:
11. Systems are becoming rapidly more complex. They can only really be operated by the people who write them. And you can’t do a good job of writing them unless you are regularly exposed to the feedback loops of operating them.
12. Operational expertise is more critical than ever, but the landscape is shifting for ops roles. Two big trends are converging: everybody writes code, runs the code they write hosted infra and tools, we all move up the stack
13. We are decoupling “infrastructure” from “software operations” Platform engineering has emerged from this realignment. • Companies are shutting down their ops teams and outsourcing infrastructure to PaaS/IaaS/etc. • We now rely on a complex web of other higher-level providers, services and tools via APIs and SDKs.
15. No. You have a platform engineering org, which encompasses your infrastructure needs Infrastructure(n): the code you have to run, in order to run the code you want to run.
16. Infrastructure(n): the code you have to run, in order to run the code you want to run. Infrastructure is a cost center. It may be a competitive differentiator, but it is still a cost center. which means you want as little as possible.
17. ⛔ Infrastructure Org ✅ Platform Org • SRE • Deep subsystem teams • “Pure” platform teams • Security • Release engineering • Developer tools • Front-end developer experience
18. One of the things platform teams are best at: Running Less Software.
19. which builds infra composes architecture as a product. Within your platform organization, you may have a platform team
21. How to tell if your “platform team” is really a platform team or not: Is the team responsible for SLOs, service uptime, and a reliable customer experience? ✅ platform team NO ⛔ platform team YES
22. Platform teams are responsible for developer productivity. Product engineering teams and SREs are responsible for customer experience.
23. If your platform team spends a lot of time writing software, something is wrong.
24. Your platform team *should* spend time on: • Doing discovery • Building champions • Baking in feedback cycles • Working with product managers • Working with design (!) • Figuring out the golden path • Practicing change management • Building a roadmap • Talking with focus groups • Building internal APIs
25. Cost is an essential part of architecture. Build vs Buy is not the only time we need to think about this!!
26. “If you build it, they will come”?? No, they fucking won’t. Make sure you are building a platform that people actually want and need!
27. “Vendor engineering” is a large share of any platform team’s remit Cost is an essential part of architecture. Platform teams are super high leverage.
28. If you’re an infra/devops/ops engineer, and you haven’t learned to work on product: Learn. Once you dig your way out of firefighting, product is what comes next.
29. The hardest part of software is operating it. Always has been. Always will be.
30. In conclusion, computers are terrible Everything dies Have fun!
31. Charity Majors @mipsytipsy