My name is John, and I am a Virtual Reality Developer Intern working with the DevOps/LiveOps team here at Hasbro.

When I accepted the position, I had an idea of what I could expect. I anticipated efficiency, both in code and in our day to day practices. I believed that the main goal of this team was to resolve issues across the organization and fix problematic internal operations. Shut down websites and application services all over the world with the click of a few buttons.

Firstly, we do all those things. Secondly, we do none of those things. We are stronger for it.

The DevOps/LiveOps team at Hasbro has engineers deeply rooted in all the traditional DevOps roles, like Infrastructure and Operations people who update website redirects just about daily.

But we also have Game Developers, and Build Managers for mobile applications, and (I suppose) a Virtual Reality Developer as well!

Admittedly, this stems from the work a lot of DevOps teams usually find themselves doing. In my experience, it has opened my eyes to just how many talents exist here at Hasbro. Developers communicate with each other to figure out solutions that wouldn’t be possible with a less dynamic DevOps team. Even on a team so deeply rooted in pipeline infrastructure and keeping costs down, the most important part of the job is visiting people around the organization and asking how you can help. This intent on providing solutions for people, not just for pipelines, means that engineers on the team can take a lot of ownership over their product. Their work is visible and is used every day.

For me this meant that I was able to interact with individuals across the organization, showing off new technologies and possibilities to anyone we could get in the door. I could bring excitement and innovation to a company larger than just IT over the course of three months.

So, I needed to refine my idea of a DevOps/LiveOps team: it isn’t all about Kubernetes, AWS, Jenkins, MongoDB, build machines, and GitLab downtime—it’s about people, too. Hopping between groups to provide solutions that make us more communicative. Creative. Collaborative.

That mobility is emboldening.

John, Rochester Institute of Technology

IT Technical Services Intern