Perhaps I'm a bit cynic here but this whole mess, turmoil, and hype is so far playing in our advantage (as "engineers"). If any, the real ones that are losing are the companies themselves (because we could work much much efficiently but we don't because we cannot even agree on what DevOps means, or if we actually need DevOps or not). This regardless of the latest trend of layoffs we have seen (I'm considering the whole planet, not just SV).

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for efficiency and the like, but if I were a mere "programmer" or "sysadmin" or "webmaster" I don't think I would earn as much as I do now that I'm a "platform/software engineer". Words matter. If you're called an "engineer" (regardless of whether you have a degree in engineering or not), then business people will think something more of you than if you're just a "programmer". Same for "platform" and "devops". Same for "data scientist" and "statistician".

You think knowing K8s justifies the $150K/year paycheck in your startup that has only 20 "engineers" and merely 5 services on production? C'mon. But here we are, and I'm more than happy to get those $150K/year for applying K8s and Terraform when it's not actually needed at all.

Posts like this one only reminds us that we live in a time where people is making money out of hype (scrum masters anyone?)... but as long as I'm making money as well, I'm happy to join the conversation and play the "let's fix this!" pantomime.