Fellow list reader Shelby recently wrote to me with a question (edited slightly for clarity):

I’m early in my career. Do you think it is a good idea to look for specifically DevOps roles, or other positions like sys admin, engineer, etc., that mention utilizing DevOps practices in the job description?

And my answer below:

Hi, Shelby.

That’s an interesting question. I think I have two answers:

1. Early in your career, it’s probably best not to be too picky about exactly which kinds of roles you get. The most important early on is usually just to get experience. This helps in two specific ways. First, It increases your market value, so that in the future you can get better and better roles. Second, it helps give you a broader perspective, and learn what technologies and areas are most interesting to you, so that you can niche down further as your career advances.

2. The very concept of a “DevOps role” is pretty vague, and can probably include everything else you mentioned already anyway. Often, jobs advertising “DevOps roles” really mean “operations roles”. Sometimes they mean a “full-stack developer and operations person”. Sometimes they just mean “a person who builds and maintains CI/CD pipelines.” Most of these types of job titles represent a misunderstanding of DevOps, so can be a yellow flag that the company advertising the role may not actually be doing DevOps at all, but are just using that term as a buzzword to attract applications.

Depending on your personal interests, you may still find attractive jobs with such a title, of course. Especially if you’re interested in operations (i.e. managing Kubernetes or AWS), or automation tools (build pipelines, disaster recovery, etc).

So in summary, if you already know what kind of role you’re most interested in, by all means look for such a role. If the industry still seems vast and/or confusing, though, don’t get too caught up on that early on. Take a job that you like, and don’t be afraid to change in a couple of years if you feel you can learn more or find a better fit somewhere else.

Jonathan

Thanks for your question, Shelby!