"The entire Russian empire is ruled by ten thousand clerks!" ~Tsar Alexander II, final words
Why did I choose this life?
Well, for starters, I was born into it. Then, a lot happened.
I walked, grew up, ran, swam, got spat on, turned on a computer, learned to type, started this site, set up SSL, and voila! Here we are—you reading, me writing. A tale as complex as any, with plenty you’ll never know.
I got into DevOps for the money at first, which is a dumb reason unless your system demands it. The second reason was curiosity, which is better. Networks, security, ports, data, ciphers—it’s all interesting. And despite being naval tech at its core, it has roots in the ancient ways land armies sent emissaries and maintained order in a world that, fundamentally, never changes. As Philip K. Dick noted, the empire never ended.
It’s still there, if you care to look. Standing before the Colosseum in Rome, I wondered: How did these hill-dwelling farmers spread glory, infamy, and bloodshed across London, Athens, and Jerusalem, only to return home and till soil under a man in a fancy hat* for centuries? Was there a choice? Is there ever a choice?
The choices we make exist within the systems we live under. The Roman Citizens (the top 1% of their time) resembled the House of Lords in 1910**—old families, historic lineages, all obsessed with power and self-preservation. By Julius Caesar’s era, you needed immense luck (or captured land) to break into the elite. The semi-famous Palestinian prince, Herod Agrippa, went bankrupt trying to buy his way in. The empire ran on constant military expansion & the importation of slave labor from Germania, Africa, and the Balkans. It was a tough time to be a king—a harder time to be nobody.
I did say this was about DevOps. Let’s get back to that; but first, some more about Rome.
The Roman system worked—until it didn’t. It ran smoothly so long as border tribes stayed weak and Egyptian grain flowed. But bureaucracy always ossifies. When a system starts failing, its maintainers often become more invested in protecting their piece of it than in keeping it functional. The result? Decline. The empire didn’t become the United States of Rome, which is honestly good, as life without pants*** would have been intolerable.
DevOps emerged from the collapse of a failing IT paradigm. We built on big metal systems, and life was good—until we realized a single bad Windows update could bring it all down. The stress was unbearable. I watched colleagues suffer heart attacks on the job. When a system stops working, you either cling to it or break away.
Like a rebellious tribal or a struggling frontier farmer in 200 AD, I left the old ways behind. The incumbents—Microsoft, Cisco, Canonical—weren’t offering support without exorbitant costs. A quiet revolution happened. New powers—AWS and HashiCorp—rose. Learning their ways became crucial. Windows AD? Email management? Someone else could deal with it. The horizon was shifting.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Complex systems—whether computer networks or governments—constantly shift power and control. But don’t expect to hear about it in the news; incumbents usually control the narrative.
So, keep your eyes open. Stay sharp. New paradigms are always on the way, and sometimes, the smartest move is the simplest one. The empire won’t admit it, but it might be hanging by a thread.
* No popes were harmed in the writing of this missive.
** America has no true equivalent—except perhaps the obscure descendants of the Gilded Age aristocracy we read about in Gatsby.
*** Toga-wearing Romans were mostly dressed for ceremony. Pants took over due to practicality—protecting legs from snakes, sparks, and dirt in working environments.