[ale] What's my job title?

[Jerald Sheets]

As a Sr. DevOps guy, and one of the Puppet ecosystem “thought leaders” (that’s what they call me… I hate the term), I don’t think you can claim a DevOps title unless you’ve got a big chunk of this:

https://xebialabs.com/periodic-table-of-devops-tools/ <https://xebialabs.com/periodic-table-of-devops-tools/>

in your tool belt.

You should have at least one (and possibly two) strengths in each period, and you should also have a backup skill in each period.  Granted, we see a lot of this stuff in our regular travels as sysadmins, but these tools are usually the recruiter “buzzword bingo” you’re going to have to play.

The recruiters who understand you can have Puppet/Chef/Ansible OR SALT and still be considered as “enabled” on Config management are few and far between, though.  They take all the hot words from their requirement and only look for that.  Same with each period and each skillset.

Since the varied skills in that table can be mixed and matched in any number of a thousand different ways, you have to educate them on what DevOps actually is (a mindset and methodology) rather than a very specific conflation of tools.

The waters are beginning to clear a little, but there’s still a LOT of misinformation out there.  The number of recruiters who have complained to me directly that so many UNIX guys are saying to them “I was doing DevOps before it was a thing” shows me very specifically that it is our discipline that is spreading some of the misinformation, and that is unfortunate.

I usually share that table with them, and take them through this dilemma, pointing out that someone can be Chef enabled, and will likely with very little ramp-up be quite capable on Puppet, but maybe not so much CFEngine.  They might have AWS, but Heroku might escape them.  These guys aren’t technologists, and simple tools like this that are familiar and easy to understand helps to cut the “crap” in their side of the equation so those of us with specific skills can show them just how close to the mark we are on any given job listing.

I’ll probably have some detractors in my estimation of the DevOps world, and I’m prepared for that.  However, recruiters haven’t a clue.  They have  a handful of technologies they see as “DevOps” and don’t see the larger world and the underpinning philosophy.  This helps.

Now, as for the hiring company?  It’s a lot harder to convince them, and they’re holding all the cards.  Getting the conversation with the hiring manager and more appropriately your future coworkers would go a long way on this.

Good luck in your search, and welcome back to Atlanta upon great success!


Jerald Sheets
DevOps Partners, LLC
Atlanta, GA


(I’m a startup with no open roles, btw.)  :)


> On May 6, 2017, at 3:26 PM, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 6 May 2017 15:12:02 -0400
> DJ-Pfulio <djpfulio at jdpfu.com> wrote:
> 
>> "Automation monkey" - can't call yourself an engineer without a
>> license, after all. ;(
> 
> Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man
> 
> SteveT
> 
> Steve Litt
> May 2017 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/28
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20170508/3f436a03/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 842 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20170508/3f436a03/attachment.sig>