The way forward as a developer

I recently read an article regarding to the skills gap which has developed since companies started moving to the cloud. Moving to the cloud sounds so simple: no more hardware to maintain, “magic” scalability, infinite servers and lower costs. But is it really that simple, and why is there now a skills gap?

Over my career I’ve typically worked in startups, growing them to large scale organisations. This meant that the dev team was also a tech team, network team and systems admin team all in one. We handled the lot, but in my experience, the majority of devs seem to want to focus on writing code. Combined with system admins who might not have exposure to code, they may not be aware of the unique challenges for specific teams. Generalised rather than specific solutions are proposed. Compromises are made and over time infrastructure stands still and so do the devs (typically). With the differences between these two sides, it’s no wonder there is a skills gap!

Once this realisation happens within a business, in comes the requirement for devops - the halfway point. But how do you find or train someone to do both? Simply put, it’s hard and takes time to find the right people. Organisations need to support those who have that desire and encourage it for those who may be initially hesitant. Devops is more than just forming another systems team, it’s a complete shift in culture where the platform itself (be it Azure, AWS, Rackspace...) is equally important as the code for the platform.

What does it mean to handle devops? Environments now need to be automated, start at certain times or at the click of a button, scale automatically (within a ruleset), shut down when not in use... as well as be secure, performant and cost effective. This means more than just scheduling some cron jobs to turn on and off servers. You’re literally destroying and recreating environments (stacks) at will - one should not get too attached to a hosted environment in this situation. Having teams owning their infrastructure can speed up projects and unlock enormous business value!

The devops skill gap is real, but by fostering a devops culture the gap can be closed. Developing this culture can be a tough gig when businesses are demanding more and more from their staff. As a developer, you have to start to broadening your thinking and be prepared to move outside your area of expertise. But by closing that gap, and owning the process end to end, you become a more valuable member of your team. You may even develop a new passion while you’re at it!