Those of you who have known me for any length of time know that I use the hashtag #DevOOps often when referencing online articles where performance and availability failures have occurred in the public view. Why do I do this? Do I just hate people in DevOps?
What Are You? DevOps or DevOOps?
I’ve encountered Agile, DevOps, SAFe and a myriad of other new terms pitched at me over the last decade, and all of them come with their own group of rabid advocates ready to squash the slightest amount of skepticism or whimsy. I’m neither for or against any of these. Call it a new culture. Call it a new methodology, or a “mindset”. If something works for an organization, great! What I have also seen is a tendency to overhype a solution as a new template or mold that everyone must fit in if they want to be successful. The impression is that if a trendsetter like Google, Facebook, or Microsoft decides to do something, we all have to do that thing, because that is the only thing that works now. Add to this the additional pressure of taking oneself too seriously – becoming a bit draconian – and you are like a new lure thrown into the fishing pond for someone like me. I can’t resist. I. must. poke. the. bear.
You Say You Are DevOps
I cannot count the number of organizations that have told me “we have fully embraced Agile”, only to find out they took the things from the Agile manifesto that made the developers lives easier while putting the business at risk. All because no one knew to push back and insist there were other things that make Agile process (you know, the hard stuff) work well. There are those that brag about being a “DevOps” shop, when it’s obvious they are just a 24X7 war room trying to mitigate outages – but paid a whole lot more. It becomes hard to hold the tongue when I see so much dysfunction, knowing nothing short of an IT intervention would help. Watching millions of project dollars in a dumpster fire doesn’t make me happy. Well, maybe a little as long as it isn’t my dollars. Just kidding!
Maybe You Are DevOops
I’ve never been “anti” anything, but I AM anti this-new-thing-is-the-only-answer-to-the-worlds-problems. That goes for things I’ve worked with for the last 20 years that have never worked well for anyone in the last 20 years. I know it’s hard for some to believe, but IT is still in its infancy. YAML and K8’s are the Members Only jackets and parachute pants of the industry right now, and this too shall pass. Some of you are too young to get that joke, and that is part of the problem too…whippersnappers! But if you are seeing success with this, wonderful. Go for it and love it. I celebrate your success. DevOps could be your answer. I also think it’s acceptable to have an inner cynic just to keep things from getting too serious.
You Are the Bear
Let’s face it, if we had it altogether, we would never experience performance failures like we see on Black Friday and other peak load times EVERY SINGLE FREAKING YEAR (including this one). Open source would never have malicious code in it that is taken advantage of. Developers would make great testers, and we would all find a pile of buried treasure in our backyards. Until then, I will continue to see failures as a part of the human condition. And that’s perfectly OK! And perfectly OK to snicker at – just a little. I freely admit I enjoy “poking the bear” – but I’m just as ready to do so at performance engineering. Everything is fair game. If this offends you, I want to apologize ahead of time. That unfollow button is one click away and could reduce your stress levels. You are way too serious for me. Otherwise, stick around. There’s a lot more laughs in the future, and it will make bears of us all.