[rch]

Back when I thought I was going to be a Mechanical Engineer, I had a summer course that included surveying along with machine design and robotics. I felt the latter were more relevant to me, but had I gone on to work in oil fields in SE Asia I probably would have appreciated my time tromping around campus taking measurements.

I see all of this as just 'engineering' work, but it's easier to delegate certain things than others. When I ask someone new to configure Postgres for secure remote administration, script or otherwise automate backups, and rough out a schema for some tool we're thinking about, they'll likely accomplish at least a subset those tasks. The remainder is an opportunity for discussion. Someone else might just ask me to build something, and we'll talk about usability when he's done with the physics side of things.

But if I leave, what does that physicist look for in a new hire? The skillset of an 'engineer' is frustratingly broad and vague from a hiring point of view. Getting so-called DevOps out of the way might give another new hire the chance to develop as a programmer, and vice versa. Hopefully one or both of those two will eventually develop into an engineer.