@scottalanmiller said in The Difference Between IT and Bench Work SAMIT Video:
@flaxking said in The Difference Between IT and Bench Work SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller It is interesting that bench/IT cross discipline experience is so common, but it often happens from convenience/budget constraint or ignorance. (though sometimes it happens as a hobby) And thus being cross trained won't help you that much in advancing your career.
However IT/Dev cross discipline is super useful and there is an ongoing spike in demand for it. As well as being well paying. But Bench/IT is more common. That might be changing though. With the cloud providing another layer of abstraction from the hardware, and with learning Powershell scripting meaning you're starting to cross into Dev.
My personal belief is that DevOps is not the future of systems administration, only a stepping stone along the path. System admins aren't attempting to do something bespoke or unique, like developers are, so the use of development methodologies doesn't make sense abstractly within IT circles. Right now, a lack of advanced tooling for what admins need creates a need for DevOps, but only to fill an existing gap - one that I know of at least one company working to fill. Once the power of Devops exists without the need for developer knowledge or experience, I think that we will rapidly see that category disappear again.
I think you're probably right, when we're talking about interdisciplinary IT/Dev skills and the misnamed 'DevOps Engineer' role. Eventually that will be automated and abstracted away. At which point mixing IT and Dev will as inherently valuable as mixing any other discipline with Dev, and it would make more sense to be talking about the value of Bench/Dev vs. IT/Dev.
However the 'power of DevOps' is a whole other can of worms.
