[1337shadow]

They are rare because it takes like 15 yrs of day and night hacking & learning from books that range from software to sales, through system & networking and communication, and found ways to practice, not something many people are both willing and able to do.

[hosh]

They are rare because the primary skill of a devops person is creative problem solving in an unknown situation and with unfamiliar tooling. You are plumber, not a cowboy or farmer.

While I have some deep knowledge in a few areas, most of the work I do has a lot more to do with researching tools, tracing down problems, and figuring out solutions that do not always appear on Google or StackOverflow.

That mindset has also served me well when I write backend code.

[1337shadow]

I would also add that I consider this practice as a triangle: science, art and sports.

Science: because a scientific protocol is to be used when making and testing code, to understand every detail, and because it's based on logic

Art: because code should first be written for another human (or you in 6 months) to read and understand, that it works or not is secondary,

Sports: because you need everyday to be in the retrospective of your past performance and try to improve it