I have a DevOps opportunity, but I have no experience. Is it too risky?

Hi everyone,

I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules (I'm new, so I apologize in advance and will remove the post if necessary).

M35, I'm considering a job opportunity that would require me to leave a large multinational company for a smaller company looking for a middle developer in a DevOps role. I'm preparing for the interview by taking courses on Docker and Kubernetes and brushing up on Spring Boot.

In my current job, after six years, I'm still involved in legacy support and mainly manage tickets (about €1,800 net per month in a small town in central-northern Italy). I haven't written code for a few years, and even before that, I've never been involved in full-fledged projects (all started and finished). In my role, every day is active and busy, but I'm not really a developer: I read logs, solve some problems, and respond to tickets, but I've never really acquired any particular technical skills.

I studied computer engineering, but I didn't finish, and this was my first and so far only job. I've often been told I should have been more proactive, but I didn't really know how to do more beyond writing a few PowerShell noscripts to consult logs and respond to tickets. I feel like I've wasted the little I've studied.

The work environment, however, is fantastic, and my colleagues are exceptional. Even on a human level, they supported me when I went through a difficult period, and they didn't fire me even though I wasn't at my best. That's why I feel guilty about wanting to change, but I realize that, after all these years, I haven't learned anything about real programming.
I'm wondering if I should stay out of gratitude, or if it would be a mistake not to take advantage of the opportunity to learn new technologies at another company. In particular, I wonder if the DevOps role might be too challenging for me. So far, I've only seen it in courses, but I know the reality could be very different.

I wanted to hear from those in the industry.

Thanks so much in advance!

https://redd.it/1q2o742
@r_devops

How do you realistically start freelancing as a DevOps engineer?

Hi everyone,

I’m a DevOps engineer with \~3 years of experience, and I’m trying to break into DevOps freelancing / contract work, but I’m struggling to get my first clients.

My background includes:

* Linux and system troubleshooting
* Kubernetes (production experience; Kubestronaut)
* Cloud providers (mainly AWS)
* CI/CD pipelines
* Infrastructure automation
* Some coding (Golang / noscripting)

I’ve been actively trying for around 4 months (Upwork / cold outreach / networking), but haven’t landed any freelance work yet. This made me realize I might be missing something beyond just listing tools and skills.

I’d really appreciate advice on:

* How people actually got their first DevOps freelance clients
* What kind of projects clients trust freelancers with at the beginning
* How to position yourself (tools vs outcomes vs niches)
* Whether freelancing is realistic at \~3 YOE, or if contract roles are a better entry point
* Common mistakes DevOps engineers make when starting freelancing

For those already freelancing:

* What would you do differently if you were starting today?
* What helped you win trust without a long freelance history?

Thanks in advance any real-world experience or guidance would be very helpful.

https://redd.it/1q2pw6l
@r_devops

What level of expertise and depth of study is needed for a good DevOps job?

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to understand what level of expertise and depth is expected for well-paid DevOps / Platform / SRE roles that also have a healthy work culture.

By good roles, I mean:

* Good compensation
* Interesting work (building/designing systems, not just alerts)
* Reasonable on-call and low firefighting

I’d appreciate insights on how deep one is expected to be in the following areas for such roles:

* Linux & OS fundamentals
* Kubernetes
* AWS / cloud infrastructure
* CI/CD
* Golang & noscripting

Also:

* How do expectations differ between startups and mature companies?
* Does years of experience really matter, or is skill depth more important?
* How do experienced engineers identify teams with good engineering culture and manageable on-call?

Thanks for any insights!

https://redd.it/1q2q9xx
@r_devops

Where do people get the idea from that DevOps is the way to go career wise?

If you wanna get into IT / remote / lotta money(im sure thats what they get told haha) I would suggest following some development courses where its easier to have a junior role.
What i did see float around without calling their names are people that sell courses with the promise that if you know a ci cd tool and some docker/kubernetes you can get into the business which in my personal experience is not realistic.


https://redd.it/1q2qkpr
@r_devops

Open source observability - what is your take?

Hey there 👋

I currently use victoriametrics/grafana for metrics and Loki for logs (I also use ELK, but not every project has the budget to keep an ES cluster running, so S3 is a nice alternative).

What I'm missing from this stack is APM. Today I stumbled upon a link (which I lost) for a new s3-backed open source apm tool and got me thinking about this.

Since I'm already on the Grafana stack, I'm considering Tempo, but there are other alternatives like https://signoz.io/ https://openobserve.ai/ and Elastic APM. All three of those are pretty resource-hungry and I'd prefer something lighter with S3 storage.

Do you have any suggestions for other tools to evaluate? On the app side we're mostly hosting php and python apps.

Happy new years and thanks in advance for any tips!

https://redd.it/1q2u17c
@r_devops

How do you realistically start freelancing as a DevOps engineer?

Hi everyone,

I’m a DevOps engineer with \~3 years of experience, and I’m trying to break into DevOps freelancing / contract work, but I’m struggling to get my first clients.

My background includes:

* Linux and system troubleshooting
* Kubernetes (production experience; Kubestronaut)
* Cloud providers (mainly AWS)
* CI/CD pipelines
* Infrastructure automation
* Some coding (Golang / noscripting)

I’ve been actively trying for around 4 months (Upwork / cold outreach / networking), but haven’t landed any freelance work yet. This made me realize I might be missing something beyond just listing tools and skills.

I’d really appreciate advice on:

* How people actually got their first DevOps freelance clients
* What kind of projects clients trust freelancers with at the beginning
* How to position yourself (tools vs outcomes vs niches)
* Whether freelancing is realistic at \~3 YOE, or if contract roles are a better entry point
* Common mistakes DevOps engineers make when starting freelancing

For those already freelancing:

* What would you do differently if you were starting today?
* What helped you win trust without a long freelance history?

Thanks in advance any real-world experience or guidance would be very helpful.

https://redd.it/1q2pw6l
@r_devops

Where do people get the idea from that DevOps is the way to go career wise?

If you wanna get into IT / remote / lotta money(im sure thats what they get told haha) I would suggest following some development courses where its easier to have a junior role.
What i did see float around without calling their names are people that sell courses with the promise that if you know a ci cd tool and some docker/kubernetes you can get into the business which in my personal experience is not realistic.


https://redd.it/1q2qkpr
@r_devops

Open source observability - what is your take?

Hey there 👋

I currently use victoriametrics/grafana for metrics and Loki for logs (I also use ELK, but not every project has the budget to keep an ES cluster running, so S3 is a nice alternative).

What I'm missing from this stack is APM. Today I stumbled upon a link (which I lost) for a new s3-backed open source apm tool and got me thinking about this.

Since I'm already on the Grafana stack, I'm considering Tempo, but there are other alternatives like https://signoz.io/ https://openobserve.ai/ and Elastic APM. All three of those are pretty resource-hungry and I'd prefer something lighter with S3 storage.

Do you have any suggestions for other tools to evaluate? On the app side we're mostly hosting php and python apps.

Happy new years and thanks in advance for any tips!

https://redd.it/1q2u17c
@r_devops

What actually happens to postmortem action items after the incident is “over”?

Hi folks,

I’m trying to sanity-check something and would appreciate some honest answers from people doing on-call / incident work.

In places I’ve worked (small to mid-size teams, no dedicated SREs), we write postmortems after incidents, capture action items, sometimes assign owners, set dates… and then real life happens.

A few patterns I keep seeing:

action items slip quietly when other work takes priority
once prod is “stable”, the incident is mentally considered done
weeks later, it’s hard to tell what actually changed (especially for mid-sev incidents)
sometimes the same incident happens again in a slightly different form

Tooling-wise, it’s usually:

incidents/alerts arrive in Slack
postmortems written in Confluence
action items tracked in Jira (if they make it there at all)

My question isn’t how this should work, but how it actually works for you/your team:

What happens when a postmortem action item misses its due date?
Is there any real consequence, or does it just roll over?
Who notices, if anyone? Do you send a notification?
Do you explicitly track whether an incident led to completed changes, or does it fade once things are stable?
If incidents consistently resulted in completed follow-up work — and didn’t quietly fade after recovery — would that materially change your team’s on-call life?

Not looking for best practices. I’m just trying to understand whether this pain exists outside my bubble.


I appreciate any comments / opinions in this area :)

Cheers!

https://redd.it/1q30bt7
@r_devops

I have a DevOps opportunity, but I have no experience. Is it too risky?

Hi everyone,

I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules (I'm new, so I apologize in advance and will remove the post if necessary).

M35, I'm considering a job opportunity that would require me to leave a large multinational company for a smaller company looking for a middle developer in a DevOps role. I'm preparing for the interview by taking courses on Docker and Kubernetes and brushing up on Spring Boot.

In my current job, after six years, I'm still involved in legacy support and mainly manage tickets (about €1,800 net per month in a small town in central-northern Italy). I haven't written code for a few years, and even before that, I've never been involved in full-fledged projects (all started and finished). In my role, every day is active and busy, but I'm not really a developer: I read logs, solve some problems, and respond to tickets, but I've never really acquired any particular technical skills.

I studied computer engineering, but I didn't finish, and this was my first and so far only job. I've often been told I should have been more proactive, but I didn't really know how to do more beyond writing a few PowerShell noscripts to consult logs and respond to tickets. I feel like I've wasted the little I've studied.

The work environment, however, is fantastic, and my colleagues are exceptional. Even on a human level, they supported me when I went through a difficult period, and they didn't fire me even though I wasn't at my best. That's why I feel guilty about wanting to change, but I realize that, after all these years, I haven't learned anything about real programming.
I'm wondering if I should stay out of gratitude, or if it would be a mistake not to take advantage of the opportunity to learn new technologies at another company. In particular, I wonder if the DevOps role might be too challenging for me. So far, I've only seen it in courses, but I know the reality could be very different.

I wanted to hear from those in the industry.

Thanks so much in advance!

https://redd.it/1q2o742
@r_devops

What are the best practical DevOps tutorials that were released recently?

What are the best practical DevOps tutorials that were released recently? I am always on the lookout for new things to learn. Feel free to share.

https://redd.it/1q32e5o
@r_devops

Is it really worth getting into devops after spending years on another role?

I am QA Engineer(manual+automation)for 8 years and was offered DevOps position starting from July 2026 after passing an internal interview.
For about 3 months I am studying for CKA certificate and i’m close to schedule for the exam.
I already do the devops work in the team by managing a k8s cluster, fixing CI/CD pipelines, grafana monitoring, setting alerts and playing with noscripts.

Do I love it? Yes, I wished I started earlier because I’ve always wanted to get my hands on the infra.
I am tired of QA already which they always say it’s automation but 70-80% is manual, and maintenance of an automation framework.

Questions that are bugging me at this point are:
is it really worth it?
Is it future proof?
What’s the future of it with the evolution of AI and the mass layoffs which will keep occuring?


https://redd.it/1q365xe
@r_devops

DevOps/Platform engineers: what have you built on your own?

Hey folks,

I’m a platform engineer (Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Python, CI/CD, some Go). I want to start building my own thing, but I’m honestly stuck at the *idea* stage.

Most startup/product advice seems very app-focused (frontend, mobile apps, UX-heavy SaaS), and that’s not my background at all. I’m trying to understand:

* What kinds of products actually make sense for someone with a DevOps / platform engineering background?
* Has anyone here built something successful (or even just useful) starting from infra/automation skills?
* Did you double down on infra tools, or did you force yourself to learn app dev?

I’d love to hear real examples — even failed attempts are helpful.

Thanks!

https://redd.it/1q2t5ma
@r_devops

Cost guardrails as code: what actually works in production?

I’m collecting real DevOps automation patterns that prevent cloud cost incidents. Not selling anything. No links. Just trying to build a field-tested checklist from people who’ve been burned.

If you’ve got a story, share it like this:

Incident: what spiked (egress, logging, autoscaling, idle infra, orphan storage)
Root cause: what actually happened (defaults, bad limits, missing ownership, runaway retries)
Signal: how you detected it (or how you wish you did)
Automation that stuck: what you automated so it doesn’t depend on humans
Guardrail: what you enforced in CI/CD or policy so it can’t happen again

Examples of the kinds of automation I’m interested in:

“Orphan sweeper” jobs (disks, snapshots, public IPs, LBs)
“Non-prod off-hours shutdown” as a default
Budget + anomaly alerts routed to owners with auto-ticketing
Pipeline gates that block expensive SKUs or missing tags
Weekly cost hygiene loop: detect → assign owner → fix → track savings

I’ll summarize the best patterns in a top comment so the thread stays useful.

https://redd.it/1q2wzad
@r_devops

How do you go from incident review to actual alerts in production?

Every retro we do, someone says "we should have had an alert for this." Everyone nods. Ticket gets created.

Then it sits there for 3 weeks because nobody wants to write the PromQL.

By the time someone gets to it, we've already had another incident and the cycle repeats.

I've been messing with a tool that takes incident notes and spits out prometheus alert configs automatically. Not sure if it's worth building out more or if I'm solving a problem only my team has.

How do you guys handle this? Is there an actual workflow that works or is everyone just letting alert tickets rot in the backlog like us?

https://redd.it/1q38k59
@r_devops

DevOps/SRE coding assessment

Looking for some recommendations on how to improve on the coding assessment phase of interviews.

For context, I am self taught but have 10+ years experience as a devops/software engineer focusing on kubernetes, building/maintaining ci/cd piplines, python noscripting for automation, etc. About 4-5 years ago i was considering moving to san francisco and had a ton of interviews. Feel like i did really well technical/infrastructure discussion until we got to the coding assessment. As i said im self taught so im sure it was just spaghetti code (though i hope ive made some improvements in the last 4-5 years). My fiance and I are thinking about moving and I want to be better prepared for interviews.

Ive done some research into things like leetcode, bootcamps, mentorships, etc but everything seems to be scams or mixed reviews.

https://redd.it/1q280sr
@r_devops

Built an AI DevOps assistant for AWS, NEED feedback..

Hey everyone,
My cofounder and I are building an AI-powered DevOps assistant aimed at startups and engineering teams using AWS. We'd love your raw, unfiltered feedback on the idea before we go further. 🙏

It’s basically a chat-based DevOps co-pilot that connects to your AWS account and helps you manage infra using natural language. It can:

Answer questions like:
“How many EC2s are running?”,
“Why are my costs high this month?”,
“Which stacks are failing?”

Convert prompts into AWS CLI commands (editable + safe approval flow)

Generate, iterate, and deploy CloudFormation templates from natural language

Integrate with GitHub/Bitbucket to:

-Scan repos for CloudFormation
-Trigger existing CI/CD pipelines
-Stream logs and diagnose failures
-Apply rule-based fixes via PRs

Enforce IAM-permissioned access, full audit logs, and org/team-based controls

We’re planning to add Terraform support next (already being requested).

☁️ This is why we’ve built it:

Infra is complex, DevOps is expensive, and a lot of startups struggle to operate AWS safely. We want this tool to feel like a senior DevOps engineer who answers questions, gives you the CLI/code to act, and handles pipelines safely with approvals.

https://redd.it/1q3dmd4
@r_devops

When is old?

At what age should someone hang their hat on trying to get in the door? What door should the older try for?

https://redd.it/1q3jlw7
@r_devops

One Windows package manager to rule them all?

Just came across a nice articsl about an unfair that brings all the various package managers together.

I personally mainly use chocolatey as it what integrated into the tool company use, however this one "UniGetUI" brings them all together into a gui.

I haven't tried it myself yet but the artical seems to good not to share.

https://www.makeuseof.com/replace-microsoft-store-with-unigetui-package-manager/

https://redd.it/1q3kln2
@r_devops

Many companies are moving towards Dev-owned DevOps.

I’m seeing a trend where companies want developers to handle DevOps work directly.

For someone working as a DevOps engineer, what’s the best way to adapt?

What new skills are worth learning, and what roles make sense in the future?

Curious to hear how others are handling this shift

https://redd.it/1q3h19o
@r_devops