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Ask HN: Would you pay for instant devops help?

12 points by colinator ↗ HN
Would you pay for instant devops help?

I'm good at developing apps and writing code. But when it comes to deployment and devops, I find myself wading through documentation, lost in sheer volume, infuriated by UIs. I understand the concepts, but actually configuring and running servers, containers, cloud compute, aws, docker, kubernetes, etc: it's often just a big tedious pain. I can do it, but it isn't pleasant.

And whenever I do it, I always think: if I could just 'talk to a guy', who already knows it, for an hour or two, it would save multiples of those hours for me.

If there were a service in which I could, in a short time, talk to a human expert in these things for an hour or two, without signing any sort of services agreement or going through much of a signup process, I think that'd be useful.

Agree? Disagree? I know there are similar marketplaces, but many seem to be oriented to projects, bids, longer-term things. Anybody use something similar? Did it help?

10 comments

[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 21.9 ms ] thread
verdverm
I'd be available as a DevOps helper
colinator
Really? Well then, at least a handful of folks here would be on the buy side. Re sell side: what would it take to sell your expertise on such a service? I've done freelance work in another programming field, and for very short things like this (an hour or two here or there), I'd envision wanting to charge quite a bit. I dunno. Feel free to dm me - email's in profile.
bigjojoto
AWS Fargate would be and easy entry point for you..!
JeffRosenberg
Not for devops, personally, but I love the idea of a service where I can just 'talk to a guy' who's an expert in $DIFFICULT_TOPIC.
gtsteve
Yes it would be helpful to bounce ideas off an DevOps expert. I sometimes use AWS support for this and I have received some helpful advice from them but it would be nice when my questions don't necessarily revolve around how to use services but what process I should implement or when it comes to on-premise installations for example.

What sort of business model are you thinking? Kind of like Pushdoctor but for DevOps?

colinator
Huh, I didn't know of that - is that UK only? But from a quick perusal - yeah, exactly like that!
gtsteve
Yes I think it's UK only but I imagine there will be similar services in the USA.
thinkingemote
Yep 100% As a small business I sometimes feel like I would like to pay for day or two of someone to allow me to pick their brain, rather than them doing it all instead of me. My way of learning is asking stupid questions so that I get answers which fill in the gaps so I get a good foundation of knowledge. If I ask a targeted question I get fishing rod and line but miss out the wider more crucial stuff about angling. Asking stupid questions is usually a bit embarrassing though, and is inappropriate in irc/stack/discord / help forums.

I have tried our local dev ops meeting, but they seem to be mostly composed of people in full time positions in large companies, or if they are freelancers they are in the wrong tech stack.

One could go to the monthly freelance thread on HN and see if there are any freelance dev ops folks for hire with the appropriate technology knowledge you/we need.