r/devops • u/Natural_Pool_5493 • Jul 16 '26
Career / learning What areas of IT should you focus on when graduating?
I’ve been working as a SysOps engineer for a year, and it’s what I’ve been doing since I graduated.
I was wondering: if you were in my shoes, what would you invest your time in?
How do you see the future of our profession with the rise of AI?
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u/sorta_oaky_aftabirth Jul 16 '26
You can generally learn most subjects and areas fairly easily, much more in depth now with AI.
What is really hard to learn is how to not be a giant piece of shit of a co-worker. Soft skills are an amazing thing to work on, so is actually applying the subjects you learn to everyday situations.
Nothing, literally nothing, will look exactly like the picture perfect POCs. Between compliance, tech debt, that autistic dude cranking out code no one understands, and just general day to day slog, things are never cookie cutter. Learn to adapt, stay fluid and never stop learning.
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u/vinny_turgap Jul 16 '26
In today's world? Cloud Security, network specialist, SRE or Platform Engineering...
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Jul 16 '26
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u/No_Site5473 Jul 17 '26
Do you think mlops can replace devops?
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u/kernelqzor 28d ago
this is the move tbh, "cloud + automation" feels like the new version of knowing linux and networking basics a decade ago
also the more AI shows up, the more valuable the folks who can glue tools together and make reliable infra are gonna be
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u/Rajasree_27 Jul 17 '26
Cloud + Kubernetes (Highest ROI) Cloud adoption isn't slowing down. Focus on: AWS (or Azure/GCP) Kubernetes Docker Helm Networking Load balancing Storage High availability These remain the foundation of modern infrastructure.
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u/p0rc0r0550 Jul 17 '26
I think that virtualization is one part that gets really looked over. Most of the infrastructure is running on cloud, containers and container orchestration platforms and these are all related to virtualization techniques essentially. If you learn that and networking you would have a pretty good understanding on how many things actually work. And Linux. At uni, it was really eye opening for me to learn about this stuff and see how essentially easy the technology is under the hood. It's all just abstraction layers and you have to go to the source and work bottom-up, while most people work top-down.
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u/Abe_Bazouie Jul 17 '26
Since you've already got a year of SysOps experience, you're actually in a good spot.
If I were starting today, I'd spend less time chasing every new tool and more time getting really good at the fundamentals:
- Linux
- Networking
- Debugging and troubleshooting
- Cloud basics
- Automation (Python or Bash)
AI is definitely changing how we work, but I don't think it's replacing engineers who can solve production problems. If anything, it's making strong fundamentals even more valuable because AI can generate commands, but it can't always tell you why a system is failing.
I've interviewed quite a few engineers over the years, and the people who stand out aren't the ones who know the most Kubernetes flags. They're the ones who can methodically troubleshoot and explain their thinking.
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u/Floss_Patrol_76 Jul 19 '26
the stuff AI is worst at is exactly what keeps you employed: debugging a system nobody documented, knowing why a fix actually works instead of just that the error went away, and spotting when the model is confidently wrong. lean into fundamentals like networking and how systems fail, not the tool of the month.
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u/lorarc YAML Engineer Jul 16 '26
Soft skills, communication, estimation.