being a generalist and being great at what you do
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Being a generalist and being great at what you doIS IT POSSIBLE? / GOOD AND BAD
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Where do I come from?
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To DevOps or not to DevOps?This is the question!
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3 levels of Operational response
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EMT
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EmergencyRoomDoctor
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SpecialistSurgeon
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Is it a progression or a differentiation?
* Are you winning or are you loosing when you’re specializing?
* Do you want to know 1 thing only and be clueless all around?
* Don’t you need to know a lot of things anyway?
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Organizational thoughts on specialistsBENEFITS
* Can quickly figure out the problem
* Provides best (?) advise and solution (?)
* Knows his stuff
CONCERNS
* Hard to find and hire
* What does he do between the tasks?
* Point of contention – hard to plan, need to wait to allocate
* Expensive (mostly)
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It’s a range/gradient of valid possibilities
Knows Everything:* Dev* Ops* Business* Sales* Marketing* …..
Kills in ONE Things ONLY:* Ex: networking packets
Most of us common folksare somewhere here ….
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Team composition options (depends on business needs)VERTICAL SILO TEAMS
Team composition:◦ Specialists (only)
Pros:◦ In-depth specialization◦ Easy to assemble◦ Scales vertically (bigger team)
Cons:◦ Narrow specialization◦ Hand-overs◦ Long waiting queues
FEATURE (WIDE SKILL) TEAMS
Team composition:◦ Generalists augmented (on demand) by specialists
Pros:◦ Flexible◦ Autonomous (solves the tasks end-to-end)◦ Can be reassigned in a moment to most urgent tasks◦ Scales horizontally (more autonomous teams)
Cons:◦ Non-traditional◦ Hard to hire and assemble◦ Hard to incentivize people grows (Spotify uses tribes)
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Needs of companies evolve over time
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Who is this mysterious DevOps person?
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DevOps Skills signature of a person/team
Quality of knowledge
DeveloperMindset
Operational/SustainingMindset
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ROI of the gradient spread
Compensation
Availability of talent(bell curve of normal
distribution)
Hot-spots of high ROISpecializing Generalist
Generalizing Specialist
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Danger zones of the talent spread
You’re so generic that you can be easily replaced by a cheaper guy
Your head will explode ... You’re alone and have
to be the best in the field to be relevant
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We need everyone! Choose your path!