What does a typical day look like for a DevOps engineer?

You'll likely spend a lot of time troubleshooting. Many folks equate DevOps engineering to maintaining system stability while ensuring everything runs smoothly. Expect a fair amount of time dealing with team support and finding solutions.

Honestly, I consider myself a script writer above all. Most days involve fixing things that were broken while also trying to prevent future mishaps. Expect a lot of mixed tasks that can change based on what your team needs—be ready to pivot!

It really varies depending on the organization, but typically, DevOps is all about bridging the gap between code deployment and what the end users experience. You're involved in a bit of everything—from automation scripts to monitoring system health.

On a day-to-day basis, I’m often managing everything from creating CI/CD pipelines to automating deployment processes. You'll also be writing a lot of YAML and might find yourself knee-deep in cloud services. Documentation is your best friend! You don’t typically memorize everything—most engineers keep a running document of commands they use frequently.

Interviews can definitely set a higher bar than reality. You might get bombarded with questions about infrastructure as code or Linux commands, but the daily grind often involves firefighting and addressing immediate issues that pop up, rather than all that theoretical stuff.