Replacing jobs with GenAI is the worst of DevOps all over again
There is no doubt that DevOps called out some of the worst practices in IT departments. The inefficiencies of over-specialization, throwing issues “over the wall”, comms-by-ticket, misaligned incentives, and tribal organizational structures are all rightly called out by DevOps. Aligning and empowering people to work together to solve problems as they arise meant shallow bugs no longer took weeks to be solved. And, according the Linus’s law, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.
The downside to DevOps was that it was easy to over-correct. Just because you have a team that can do everything doesn’t mean that everyone should do everything. The term “full stack developer” has become a meme precisely because a full stack today requires about 3 lifetimes to master. Yet you won’t have to look too hard to find companies unironically hiring junior full stack developers.
Every DevOps team has had to face the temptation to incorporate new responsibilities and technologies into the role of “DevOps engineer”. Too many teams “boiled the DevOps frog” with many small additional responsibilities that added up over time to unmanageable levels of stress. Members of DevOps teams could no longer confidently answer the question “What am I not responsible for?” The end result are teams that spend a significant amount of time on low value work, firefighting, and context switching.
In response, DevEx calls out high cognitive load as one of the key drivers of dissatisfaction and inefficiency in DevOps teams. DevEx is a necessary correction to one of the more insidious excesses of DevOps.
But just as the concept of DevEx is steering DevOps back to its roots of collaboration rather than centralization, GenAI is threatening to make everyone responsible for everything again.
Why have designers when you can simply have your design tool create a UI from a text based description? Why have developers when GenAI can pump out thousands of lines of code in minutes? Why have technical writers when GenAI can write an entire book for you?
The idea that entire specializations are now redundant because GenAI can do most of the work repeats the worst temptations of DevOps. As these specializations are removed, responsibility is centralized onto a smaller number of generalists. It won’t take long before no one can answer the question “What am I not responsible for?” and the cycle will begin again.
GenAI has enormous potential to streamline workflows, distill mountains of data, and democratize knowledge. Teams that use GenAI to empower rather than removing people are well placed to create resilient and high performing cultures. Teams that seek to centralize responsibility will inevitably spawn artisanal workplaces that sacrifice long term growth for short term gains.
All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. Like this post if you get the reference :)