Given my recent posts about organizational structure, I feel like I need to clarify my stance on this…

You know a topic is hot when recruiters start putting it in job titles.  I do believe that most organizations will end up with a team of “T-shaped people” focused on using DevOps techniques to ensure that systems can be support an Agile business and its development processes.  However, I am not a fan of hanging DevOps on the title of everyone involved.

Here’s the thing, if you have to put it in the name to convince yourself or other people you are doing it, you probably are not.  And the very people you hope to attract may well avoid your organization because it fails the ‘reality’ test.  In other words, you end up looking like you don’t get it.  A couple of analogies come to mind immediately.

• First, let’s look at a country that calls itself the “People’s Democratic Republic of” somewhere.  That is usually an indicator that it is not any of those modifiers and the only true statement is the ‘somewhere’ part.  Similarly, putting “DevOps Sysadmin” on top of a job description that, just last week, said “Sysadmin” really isn’t fooling anyone.

• Second, hanging buzzwords on job titles is like a 16 year old painting racing stripes on the four door beater they got as their first car.  With latex house paint.  You may admire their enthusiasm and optimism.  You certainly wish them the best.  But you have a pretty realistic assessment of the car.

Instead, DevOps belongs down in the job description.  DevOps in a job role is a mindset and an approach used to define how established skills are applied.  You are looking for a Release Manager to apply DevOps methods in support of your web applications.  Put it down in the requirements bullet points just as you would put things like ‘familiar with scripting languages’, ‘used to operating in an [Agile/Lean/Scrum] environment]’, or ‘experience supporting a SaaS infrastructure’.

I realize that I am tilting at windmills here.  We went through a spate of “Agile” Development Managers and the number of  “Cloud” Sysadmins is just now tapering.  So, I guess it is DevOps’ turn.  To be sure, it is gratifying and validating to see such proof that DevOps is becoming a mainstream topic.  I should probably adopt a stance of ‘whatever spreads the gospel to the masses’.  But I really just had to get this rant off my chest after seeing a couple of serious “facepalm” job ads.