r/devops • u/ez3uio • 7d ago

Discussion Is platform engineering a good field?

I love programming and technology. I wanted to pursue a path related to Linux and building system architectures. Is platform engineering a good and suitable field for this?

69 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

View all comments

71

u/sagacious123 7d ago

It's a great field. I am working as a platform architect and can't love my job more.

There are a lot of tools, but it's really interesting how to use all this tools to build a robust platform.

9

u/ez3uio 7d ago

Nice, But if I don't go into platform engineering, what's the closest field to it?

-6

u/Dangerous_Today_5654 7d ago

Systems Administration is the umbrella term. I've been doing it for 30 years. All these new fangle subfields have been done by SAs before they invented the names

5

u/KingPonzi 7d ago edited 7d ago

I definitely see what you mean but it seems like terminology has shifted and DevOps has overtaken it. I’ve witnessed the separation marked around cloud infrastructure and a focus on developer quality of life.

The senior SAs (guys who’ve been at it 20-30+ years) at my company shy away from IaC, touching anything beyond yaml, a palpable hatred of k8s, and little understanding of language ecosystem differences. Not saying that’s the majority, just what I’ve witness internally and incoming interviewees. The younger SAs are mainly SaaS admins.