[1nighthawk]

Fair point! But here's a question (and it really is a question, not a statement) -- should things be so complex in the first place that everybody is bringing their own equipment? In my mind, this is where the problem starts.

When you start fresh, you can do so with a very much standardized set-up so a lot of things can be abstracted away. Are you familiar with the paradox of choice? Actually things may get way easier if options are fewer. Also, customization shouldn't generally take you so far as to force you to look into infrastructure. There are services for which this is not applicable, of course, but if we were able to abstract away the infrastructure problem for many use cases, many developers and companies would benefit.

I guess my point is that DevOps, as we know it, should not be necessary unless you really, really need a complex infrastructure. But in this case, this calls for a real role (more like a sysadmin) rather than for devops in terms of a philosophy / mindset / hat a developer also has to wear. Makes sense?