"I think the entire DevOps movement was a mighty, ... it failed."

I'm so sick of this nonsense. "Devops" isn't failing, isn't an issue, you can rename it whatever you want, but throughout my career the devops engineers (the ones you don't skimp on) are the best, highest paid professionals at the company.

I don't know why I keep reading these completely crazy think-pieces hemming and hawing about a system (having a few engineers who master performance/backups/deployments/oncall/retros) that seems to be wildly successful. It would be nice if more engineers understood under-the-hood, but most companies choose not to exclusively hire at that caliber.

For sure, I just turned down a gig because the company saw devops as an afterthought, not as something they would invest in. They wanted me to come in and "fix some issues quick" on a short-term contract. What they really need is 1-2 FTE ops people who think about their problems every day. If you are pushing past 3-4 devs to 10 and you have no intention of hiring a FTE ops person, you are not doing it right and shall reap what you have sown before long