I disagree. Any of our senior developers can create a CloudFormation template or use one that we already have and make minor changes and include in their repository.
Every place that I have worked it’s the responsibility of the team who wrote the code to create the CI/CD pipelines.
We have grown in complexity since we first started to have a dedicated “ops team”, but honestly it’s because developers just didn’t want to do the grunt work and we needed someone to make sure everything was done consistently.
But still ops serve developers not the other way around. The senior developers who knew AWS well, basically set the standards and kept ourselves accountable to the ops guy we hired, even though any of us can override him because of our influence in the company.
I started taking away some of my own access and privileges just so I would be the first to hit roadblocks to feel other developers pains who weren’t given the keys to kingdom.
But you understand Ops, and you have your developers understand Ops, which is my point.
Hiring "DevOps" teams completely misses the point, in the same way that I don't hire Unit Testing teams to write the unit tests that my Devs don't want to do the grunt work for.
When a Dev understands Ops they write more efficient code, as they realise what storing your entire DB in cache really means for the server.
But at least three of the senior engineers (including me) I feel could hold our own against any “specialists”. My experience are too many of the “specialists” are old school netops people who got one certification and treat AWS like an overpriced colo.
AWS likes to pawn their customers off to Certified Partners for outsourced solutions.
I'm a software engineer who went the specialist route because it does take real skill to do this well. Yes, I am embedded on a team of old school netops people now, but I'm in charge of all of this and I get to drag them kicking and screaming in to the modern world.
Specialists are worth it if you find the right one.
I’m a software developer/architect/team lead/single responsible individual depending on how the wind blows, but after a few years of adding AWS to my toolbelt, I think I can hold my own and I have been recruited to be on the infrastructure side.
Old school netops folks are so afraid of becoming less relevant they do their best to keep control. But at least they are harmless compared to the ones that have tried to transition to the cloud. They are actively harmful costing clients and companies more with little to show for it.
And no I am not young. I’m 45 and started programming in assembly in the 80s.
“lift and shift” should be phase 1. Not the end goal.
Every place that I have worked it’s the responsibility of the team who wrote the code to create the CI/CD pipelines.