Five Key Learnings from Five Years in DevOps

This article is the 63rd installment of the “DevOps Cloud Classroom” series, offering practical reflections on DevOps practice.

1. Simplicity in technology, challenges in people

People outweigh processes and tools; without the support of the right people, any tool or workflow is meaningless. DevOps aims to improve the quality of life for developers and the whole organization by building core platforms and tools that protect, enhance, and accelerate daily work, whether through new CI/CD tools, automation, or architectural platforms, always keeping a human‑centric approach.

2. GitOps is the way forward

If you are not using some form of IAC (Infrastructure as Code) to build infrastructure, you will inevitably encounter pain. Even with IAC, manual changes by engineers will cause drift over time. IAC is a great first step, but deploying GitOps tools—such as argocd or Crossplane —is the surprising next step. GitOps tools ensure that the IAC deployed to the cloud is the actual running state by continuously reconciling the live environment with the declared code and reverting any manual changes back to the version‑controlled state.

3. YAML is cool, and you can learn to code

DevOps engineers often work with large amounts of YAML/JSON and “no‑code” solutions. Learning the basics of several programming languages is invaluable: it helps debug applications during incidents, understand how internal services work, build custom solutions, develop platform‑level tools, and even contribute to open‑source “no‑code” projects.

4. The 12‑Factor App

Stateful applications in the cloud can become a nightmare. To prepare any application for the cloud, adopt the 12‑Factor App methodology (https://12factor.net/). When onboarding junior to mid‑level engineers, I always emphasize the 12 factors as a primary principle for building internal tools and services, ensuring a cloud‑ready mindset that positively impacts the organization.

5. Never stop learning

Technology evolves rapidly, especially in cloud and infrastructure tooling. New cloud resources and open‑source management tools appear constantly. Certifications like AWS have limited validity, reflecting the fast pace of change. Staying current through newsletters, YouTube tutorials, and media keeps you effective and prevents falling behind.

Original article translated from https://storkey.medium.com/5-learnings-from-5-years-in-devops-fc1a05d12865