I'm curious about the daily workload of a DevOps engineer. How much time are you actually spending writing scripts versus reviewing others' work? Is your day filled with coding, or are you often in meetings and doing planning? Also, what advice do you have for someone looking to become a DevOps engineer? What key skills or knowledge do you think are essential to succeed in this field?
4 Answers
It varies quite a bit! Sometimes I'm heavily focused on coding, especially when I’m working on projects like GitOps which involves a lot of templating. But there are days when I feel like I forget everything I know about tools like Terraform after coming back from other projects!
I'm mainly leading teams focused on automation and infrastructure, which means I spend a lot of time architecting builds for private clouds. Sure, there are tons of meetings, but I find it allows for more freedom to train others and manage projects rather than just cranking out code every day.
Most days I don’t write much code at all. My job involves gluing systems together and analyzing existing workflows, which means knowing several languages is essential. The real key is understanding how to automate processes and knowing the tools at your disposal. It’s been crucial for solving DevOps challenges in my experience.
Honestly, a lot of days I’m just in meetings and planning sessions. As a lead, I barely get to write any code these days. It's easy to get caught up in that trap, though!
Does that mean working in DevOps isn’t as hands-on as I’d expect? What’s the balance like? Is it better to start as a developer first?
So, do I need to be super experienced in software development to enter this field? I can handle basic automation scripts but not much more than that.