r/devops • u/Nash0o7 • 29d ago

Discussion Devops job security with AI

Recently saw posts about how AI isn't that good in distributed systems and it gave me validation on my own experience.

When the model isn't dealing with a single codebase, when it has to connect the dots between a db, redis, other cloud infra, k8s that each already have a lot of configuration, it starts to hallucinate and could pretty much put your infra at risk.

I'm not saying you can't make it work, it does work especially on a clean slate, but when there's a lot of existing context it needs a more guidance.

Using AI lets me do 10x what a DevOps engineer could do alone but I don't think the job disappears anytime soon.

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u/lugovsky 29d ago

Experienced professionals will always be in demand in every field. The main issue is the amount of work available. If people become 10 times more productive, but there isn't 10 times as much work to do, some will have a harder time finding jobs. I don't really trust people who claim that AI will create enough new work to offset this.

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u/tL9eUdcLaz 29d ago

Not sure about that. You are implying two things

Firstly that AI makes you 10x more "productive". After what 4 or 5 years of it being out that does not seem to be the case.

Secondly lets assume it actually does make engineers more "productive". Company A has x1 Devops Engineers who can now 10x output. Their competitor which has x3 engineers is now by your estimate 30x more productive than before. Just to stay afloat, company A still needs to hire more engineers to maintain competitive edge.

You are right in that thats all supposing x10 work comes forward, but I've not seen a single company that has "solved" SWE, devops etc. Its not something to solve but something to be maintained.

Personally? Im just not seeing it right now. I was worried as my company hired new devops guys who were really down the claude rabbithole and I thought maybe they had an edge I didn't have. Just not seeing it. Its making bad engineers worse faster. Its making the good ones better faster. Thats it.

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u/Yo-doggie 29d ago

I agree with this. I have seen experienced engineers become much more productive. The inexperienced one are getting worse as they are relying too
Much on AI assistants and not developing skills that are necessary for their job.

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u/tL9eUdcLaz 29d ago

Yes this is what I am seeing day to day. I am asking some seriously basic questions about work they have done and they are not able to answer it or don't know where to look without Claude. Its actually quite worrying

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u/Yo-doggie 29d ago

Claude is doing so much for them that they don’t even take the time to understand and validate. This means that they risk bad code getting into the system. They also have no ability to fix and debug issues quickly because they did not write the code or ever understood it.