Look. I know what you’re thinking (well, I don’t. But bear with me OK?); “hasn’t this guy seen any of the other blogs out there? Why would I possibly read his one?”

Well…. Good point. One that I went over a few times before I wrote this if I’m honest. But, I don’t think you’ve seen one quite like this before (and if you have, I’d love to see it). Mine will (try to) be different.

One of my favourite things to do is play devil’s advocate, and whilst that might not win me many friends, should make for an interesting read. I’m going to talk about the other side of DevOps, away from the glitz and glamour that start-ups exude. The side that recruiters and managers don’t want to talk about, but that all too often (at least in my case, but maybe I’m just unlucky?) ends up being reality for those of us stuck in big corporates.

The weekend work. The all weekend, all night work. The 7am server upgrades because downtime of any sort isn’t acceptable — even on legacy infrastructure about as stable as a burning house of cards. Networking teams shudder and their endless reasons why something isn’t their fault, until it magically fixes itself without anyone apparently doing anything — apart from them. And maybe the occasional axe grinding.

This isn’t to say that it’s all bad, or even mostly bad — far from it. It’s a fantastic world to live in, work is usually varied (if occasionally really badly thought out, “because agile”). The people are (largely) fantastic, clever, brilliant people just dying on the inside from all the red tape and “corporate synergies”, whatever that means.