What 10x DevOps Engineers Actually Do Differently
Why the best DevOps engineers rely on judgment, systems thinking, and prevention, not more tools or longer hours.
Let’s clear something up first.
“10x DevOps engineer” does not mean:
- works 10Ă— harder
- knows 10Ă— more tools
- fixes incidents at 3 AM like a superhero
In real teams, those people burn out—or quietly break systems.
The engineers who create outsized impact do something far less visible.
They reduce the amount of work that ever needs to happen.
That’s the real 10x.
1. They Optimize for Fewer Incidents, Not Faster Fixes
Average DevOps engineers get good at:
- restarting services
- rerunning pipelines
- applying hotfixes quickly
10x engineers ask a different question:
“Why does this incident exist at all?”
They invest in:
- guardrails
- defaults
- safe failure modes
The result is boring systems—and boring systems scale.
2. They Treat Infrastructure as a Product
Most people treat infrastructure as a task list.
10x engineers treat it like a product with users:
- developers
- SREs
- future versions of themselves
That changes everything:
- better interfaces
- clearer documentation
- safer abstractions
If infra needs constant explanation, it’s not finished.
3. They Read the Plan Before They Run It
This sounds basic. It’s not.
Most outages I’ve seen happened because:
- a plan was skimmed
- a diff was misunderstood
- a “small change” wasn’t small
10x engineers slow down before impact, not after.
They read:
- Terraform plans
- IAM diffs
- network changes
Speed comes from prevention, not urgency.
4. They Design for Failure, Not Success
Average thinking:
“This will probably work.”
10x thinking:
“What fails first when this doesn’t?”
They assume:
- networks will partition
- credentials will expire
- humans will make mistakes
So they design:
- timeouts
- retries
- rollbacks
- isolation
Failure stops being catastrophic because it was expected.
5. They Remove Complexity Instead of Adding Tools
When something breaks, the instinct is:
- add monitoring
- add alerts
- add a new service
10x engineers often do the opposite.
They remove:
- unnecessary services
- duplicated pipelines
- clever but fragile abstractions
Complexity compounds faster than bugs.
6. They Care About Cognitive Load
This is invisible but critical.
They ask:
- How many things must someone remember to operate this?
- How many steps before something goes wrong?
- How easy is it to do the wrong thing?
10x impact often comes from:
- better defaults
- fewer choices
- clearer failure messages
Less thinking = fewer mistakes.
7. They Push Back (Calmly)
They don’t say “yes” to everything.
They push back on:
- unsafe deadlines
- unreviewed changes
- architectural shortcuts with hidden costs
Not loudly. Not emotionally.
With clarity and evidence.
8. They Write Things Down
This sounds boring. It’s not.
They write:
- postmortems
- design decisions
- runbooks that explain why, not just how
Writing forces clarity. Clarity prevents repeat mistakes.
The Real 10x Difference
10x DevOps engineers don’t look impressive day to day.
They:
- touch fewer servers
- ship fewer emergency fixes
- get paged less often
But the system quietly becomes:
- safer
- calmer
- more predictable
That’s not an accident.
Final Thought
If you want to become 10x in DevOps, don’t ask:
“What tools should I learn next?”
Ask:
“What work should never have to happen again?”
The answer to that question is where real leverage lives.