How Startups Get Stuck When Hiring DevOps
I’ve seen it time and again: startups that are unsure about how to hire for DevOps, so they try to handle it themselves, struggle, go back to searching for a DevOps engineer, and then repeat the cycle.
It’s understandable, though. Early-stage startups just want to get their Minimum Viable Product (MVP) out the door.
Pitching the idea of hiring a dedicated DevOps engineer when all you want is to scale quickly can feel like overkill.
But here’s where things start to get tricky — once your platform starts scaling, those DevOps problems, both cultural and technical, begin to bite. Hard.
Why DevOps Fails in Startups
Let’s be real: It’s hard to argue that a DevOps engineer is necessary when the immediate goal is just to deliver a product. Most startups, by design, have to be lean and move fast. But without high-level DevOps knowledge coming from someone at the top — whether it’s the CEO, CTO, or Principal Engineer — the whole idea is likely to clash with leadership’s broader vision.
This is where the problem lies. If there’s no top-down understanding of how essential DevOps is, the team ends up stuck in a loop: Do we hire for DevOps? Do we just make do with what we have? Is DevOps even needed right now?
DevOps Engineer? More Like Process Engineer
I’ve joked about this before, but I’m starting to believe it more seriously: DevOps engineers should really be called Process Engineers.
In an ideal world, you wouldn’t need DevOps people because every developer would be thinking about operations, and every ops person would be thinking about development.
But let’s face it — that’s rarely the case. What companies truly want is someone to manage the implementation and automation of processes. This is why so many DevOps engineers end up managing build systems, working with both devs and ops, and just generally overseeing the process of turning developer output into business output.
And, to be honest, I’m okay with that. In fact, I like it. I like cutting through the red tape and either implementing someone else’s plan or coming up with the plan myself. It’s about taking something complex and making it run smoothly.
Why Startups Shouldn’t Hire a “DevOps Engineer”
So, here’s my hot take: Startups shouldn’t be hiring DevOps engineers. Instead, they should be hiring people who understand the DevOps culture and want to work within it. You want someone who gets that it’s about collaboration, about developers and operations working together seamlessly to move fast and iterate quickly.
In small startups, everyone wears multiple hats anyway. Hiring a dedicated DevOps engineer too early can actually be counterproductive. It screams bad practices — essentially throwing code over the fence for someone else to deal with.
Instead, focus on creating a culture where everyone takes responsibility for the processes, where the developers are thinking about operational concerns from day one, and where operations folks have insight into the development side of things.
Final Thoughts of mine
The real takeaway here is that DevOps is about collaboration, not isolation. Startups should aim to build teams where processes are shared and responsibilities overlap. The goal is not to hire someone to do DevOps but to foster a culture where DevOps practices are ingrained in everything the team does.
When startups embrace this mindset, they’ll stop getting stuck in the endless loop of questioning whether to hire DevOps engineers and start building systems that scale smoothly from the MVP stage to full production.
