Average ops have never been less capable and adverse to programming than now. The problem is getting worse, not better. I know because I am in ops and one of the few who loves to code and accidentally entered the field
No way. I have worked in ops for 20 years now; almost everyone knows how to code. Some enjoy it and some don't, but people are capable of it and will do it when needed.
I agree many can code, though a subset are certainly more scripting than engineering (like a typical 3-tier app)
There is also a subset that is very allergic to coding at this point. I've interviewed enough to see people who only know HCL/yaml. There is enough need and work (waste?) in the space that roles like this can exist
I see where you were coming from now. That sounds more like the Infra team. There are ops teams who are segmented in different ways. In my ops team, I don’t touch the infra and they don’t touch the applications.
I think that any kind of “modern ops” necessarily includes coding, even if there isn’t a ton of Python or Rust being generated as part of the workflow.
Kubernetes deployment configurations and Ansible playbooks are code. PromQL is code. Dockerfiles and cloud-init scripts are code. Terraform HCL is code.
It’s all code I personally hate writing, but that doesn’t make it less valid “software development” than (say) writing React code.
I think you have it backwards. Systems engineering is the big picture discipline of designing & managing complex systems while config management is a specific process within that.
But the same is true of devs. Many of them are pretty clueless about coding. It's a whole generation of "bootcamp people" who were designers or bartenders and heard there were more lucrative jobs.
