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Comment by dmikalova | Hacker News Reader

My friend is an EE that I went to school with. He's very bright and definitely sharper and harder working than me. I went to school for Chemistry and switched to DevOps - which are the not the highest paid of SEs. I make 1.5x what he does. I help run a package tracking dashboard. He ensures power systems for millions of people work flawlessly in all conditions. He's looking to quit the industry because its so hopeless.

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You might want to do some more research. DevOps is for sure one of the top paying engineering positions. I think the average salary right now is 134k a year USD.

Can confirm. Making ~$145k salary, with $40k in bonuses.

This is with 3 years of experience in Full Stack Web Dev SWE, and zero years in DevOps (but some basic experience with containers, cloud, and general linux server config).

I was hired as a Web App SWE, but was offered the chance to train in DevOps and took it, in order to grow additional skills. Full stack web apps are mostly CRUD. To learn the ecosystem around them... in terms of Cloud Computing, Kubernetes, and Customizing Containers... I consider that incredibly valuable.

My company needs DevOps but is having difficulty hiring for the role-- it's in high demand but low supply apparently. So, they're letting me become one of their interdisciplinary DevOps/Full Stack people.

I'm very happy as I am learning new things, working with a great team of enthusiastic, positive-attitude people, and upon my first promotion I imagine I'll make around $250k or so.

I don't know of many other professions where this is possible, while working 100% remotely.

I've done full stack and frontend but always had a lot more fun and felt more productive doing devops stuff on my personal projects than anything I've ever done at a job. I've been considering a switch, primarily because I'm just so burnt out on writing software, so maybe I should do that. I've got about the experience you had, maybe a bit more, since I've done a good amount of hobbyist work with devops.

Yep, DevOps has a similarly high status with ML.

You have hit two niches:

- web development SE (there is a bunch of them, but rarely anyone good)

- devops with kubernetes SE (there is few of them and rarely any good)

Better to hire generalists who can relentlessly dig through problems while under time pressure, and maintain emotional equanimity. These are the people who will figure out Kubernetes, even if they don't have prior experience. I've been through a hiring process where they tested for that, and I'm stealing that method.

Can you share more details about how that hiring process tested for that? I'd love to hear about it.

It was installing a well-known blogging platform. Something the team had already done before, and sounded simple, only turning into something gnarly. The trouble started with the host running on Debian, with Apache (without mod_php), so now you got a choice of fastcgi or try to force Docker on there … there are no docs for that weird combination.

You only have 30 mins. No one had ever completed it in that time, and finishing it in 30 mins was not the point. The observer can take in all sorts of things, from ability to problem solve, to how one handles the time pressure.

The point isn’t this specific combination of tech (it does not have to be a blog or an installation task), but that someone in devops will run into obscure things as a matter of course.

That's awesome, congratulations! I hope you're me from the future.

I'm doing almost exactly the same thing, with the exception that I spent less time as a full stack dev and I'm doing the DevOps for a dramatically lower salary.

I'm hoping to bump up to at least the national average (and remote would be nice) after completing the large projects laid out for the next year.

I think it has to do with how much money some job will produce over the investment, and also OFC due to to supply/demand. How hard a job is, is kind of irrelevant for the compensation.

Due to the nature of SW, you can reach thousands of customers with little investment, so you may as well slap a fat margin on it. There are SW products associated with pretty much any economic activity these days, from textile machines to farm management (got job offers to work on products in these areas recently), so SWEs are in high demand. And if the market is not doing well, you can always strike on your own and try building something people will want to use and to pay for, for little investment (again).

I'm also an EE who started my career ar a sysadmin and went to Cloud / DevOps later.

My long term plan was to switch to SE, but DevOps jobs are absolutely on fire rn.

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