Last year I graduated from college and struggled to find well-paying Software Development Engineer (SDE) roles, so I applied for a Junior DevOps position. I thought it would be okay because I knew some Linux and had some sysadmin experience from an internship. Now, a year later, I'm worried that this role isn't 'real' since I don't have a strong SDE background and my company primarily uses OpenStack instead of major cloud platforms. Did I make a mistake starting here, and is my career stuck in this path?
2 Answers
You've got the job, so clearly there is a place for Junior DevOps roles! Positions like this can pay just as well as SDE roles, if not better. Plus, a diverse skill set is more resistant to automation than many realize; there's a lot of knowledge involved that can't be easily replaced by AI.
Don't stress too much! Just focus on learning as much as you can on your own—backend systems, databases, various deployment strategies, CI/CD, and so on. That's where the real value lies, and you can always bridge the gap later.
I get what you mean, but it’s kind of unnerving when my work sometimes gets validated by AI like ChatGPT.