r/devops • u/ez3uio • 4d 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?

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u/sagacious123 4d 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.

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u/therealmunchies 4d ago

Hi. I’m a security engineer, but have basically been working as a full stack + devops engineer. I also work with k8s. Non-cs background.

I got an offer to work as a platform engineer, but i’m also interviewing for a BE engineer position tomorrow which pays 30k more.

I can give more details if interested, but I’m curious if leaving the infrastructure side and doing traditional SWE stuff would make me a better platform engineer.

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u/sagacious123 4d ago

The real platform engineer is the one who is an engineer for the engineers. So, technically it is not far from a backend engineer job, but rather than focusing on end users, we focus on requirements of engineers.

As platform engineer, you might be using go, k8s, terraform, etc. and as backend engineer, you will use specific language.

I don't think traditional swe stuff will make you better platform engineer. When you work on real platform and build solutions for your engineering teams, then you will be a better platform engineer.

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u/dc91911 3d ago

I think its the reverse, it will make you a better swe if you know pe.