HACKER Q&A
📣 uncomputation

Is DevOps still the highest paying sector of CS?


I remember for years sysadmin was the highest paying sector within CS jobs. That has now shifted to devops related stuff. With the huge interest in devops, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms, do you think the flood of people in that area will drive down the salary ranges and in what timeframe? The next three years, five years, or has it already happened and I’m late on the pickup?

  👤 high_byte Accepted Answer ✓
was it the highest paying? I think the pay is usually higher for cyber security, ai engineering, algorithm developers, some niches and I see blockchain salaries rising fast.

but in all of CS you got so many niches you could get astronomical salaries, cryptography, algotrading, advertising. and that's all before stock options or ownership. highest pay is when you own something.

👤 d--b
I dont think DevOps is a thing you specialize in, it’s a dev job someone has to do as part of some larger project. DevOps people get paid better because they know all the things that go into the project that other devs know, and they also know how to deal with large infrastructure.

If you only know kubernetes or docker without knowing what runs on them, it’s quite unlikely that your salary is going to be stellar...

If it’s money you’re after, quant/dev or algo trading is your best bet.

👤 mraza007
I think any niche area you pursue and get good at it.

It can pay you really well. I have seen people making six figures doing Excel Work such as writing VBA scripts so it all depends on the person.

If you are devops guy and you are really good at you can be making a lot of money

👤 tenfourwookie
SAP consultants usually. There are several SAP subspecialties, like ERP integrations, that are themselves very lucrative.