[quickthrower2]

This is where I think cloud architecture / devops is a good route. It is complementary and you wont get fired for knowing how to CI/CD and deploy your thing but you can learn it while still doing web dev. You may never need to go full time devops but it is a great “extra” going into another role especially in smaller teams. In larger companies specialising might be better for example being a performance JS expert.

[gtirloni]

Basic DevOps is easy enough to grasp and apply, especially if it's just the CI part. I'd say all developers should learn a bit of that.

Actual "infrastructure engineering" (cloud or not) is a different beast. It requires much deeper knowledge and would be akin to changing professions in terms of how much time you'd have to dedicate to know enough to raise about the noise level.

I've been doing this for 22+ years so I'm obviously biased.

I think your suggestions of becoming a JS performance expert is spot on.

[kypro]

Out of interest what kinda of skills would say are needed to land a devops role?

I've been doing bits and pieces of as a developer for almost a decade at this point and have wondered if it's something I could move into if I needed to. I think I might have most of the basic skills – AWS, Terraform, k8s, docker, CI (Github Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI), Linux command line, scripting.

I'd guess a good knowledge of networking and security is important too, which I think I'm okay at, but that's possibly just the Dunning–Kruger effect.

[sk11001]

It's absolutely baffling that you're presenting "knowing how to deploy your software" as a differentiating skill. It should be the bare minimum to be employable.

[quickthrower2]

Well that is just one aspect of Devops and CI/CD is definitely an art unto itself. I think there are a lot of developers who have never set up something from scratch like that for more than a toy.