[jefe78]

Perhaps it's me, but I don't see the roles of SA and Dev as interchangeable. Yet, HN seems to present a world where all Devs are SAs. As a SA, it's frustrating.

All of that to say; I agree with what you're saying. I just wonder how to get the message across that maybe both roles aren't the same...

[duck]

I think the point is when you're starting off you have to wear many hats, and since HN is a lot about start-ups, you'll see that often here. At a certain size/load I think most people on HN would recognize that you need specific talent sets (and they might not be interchangeable).

[nuclear_eclipse]

They aren't interchangeable, but there is a significant amount of overlap in the position, especially when you begin operating at scale. The amount and type of automation required when you're dealing with thousands of servers demands a breadth of knowledge that spans both domains.

[rincebrain]

They're synergistic roles, yes, and ideally you would like one with a mix of both [either a dev with sufficient experience in system administration or a system administrator with sufficient experience in development] to tackle the messes that crop up, but I haven't seen anyone claiming they're interchangeable - just that most of the population of HN is some overlap of the two.

[philfreo]

This is likely because many of us are part of small startups where the roles are often interchangeable in the early days: the same small engineering team is responsible for both "writing code", backups, infrastructure, and everything else technical.

[gregd]

It's very difficult to have your foot in both worlds and remain current in either. I did for a while, but I'm more firmly planted in the dev world now. So I can say, with some confidence, that they aren't very interchangeable.