Simple DevOps Mistakes I Made (And What You Can Learn From Them)

I started my DevOps career about three years ago. In the beginning, I made a lot of mistakes. Some were small, some big, and some caused long-term issues.

"If you're not making mistakes, you're probably not doing much."

Here are some common mistakes I made — and the lessons I learned. I hope they help you avoid the same!

1. Ignoring Coding Skills

As a DevOps engineer, you’ll write a lot of code — in Python, Shell, Terraform, Ansible, and YAML. Understanding software and how it’s built will make you much better at your job.

Lesson: Learn to code well. Think like a software developer.

2. Deleting Old Code Without Backup

I used to delete old code and pipelines in Azure DevOps & GitHub Actions that I thought wasn’t needed. Later, I needed it again and had to rewrite everything.

Lesson:

Comment out code instead of deleting it.

Always back up old files.

Archive the files if needed.

3. Trusting Verbal Instructions

Managers and teams often give instructions during meetings. If you don’t write them down, you’ll forget.

Lesson:

Document everything.

Send a weekly summary email with what you worked on and what's next.

4. Fixing Things Without Checking the Impact

Once, I saw a server with low disk space. I deleted unused Docker images or log files to fix it. But some images were needed for later. The system stopped working!

Lesson:

Always understand what your actions will affect.

Have a backup or rollback plan ready.

And also store them in any storage like (Azure Blob Storage/AWS S3 Buckets/ GCP Cloud Storage)

5. Not Automating Repeated Tasks

If you do something more than twice, it's time to automate it. I used to manually send emails regarding Disk space Monitoring if the space is less than 30% for our VM Agents.

Lesson:

Save time by automating repeat tasks.

6. Making Changes Without Backup

We once updated a database in STAGE, thinking no one used it. But the TEST environment depended on it and crashed.

Lesson:

Never make changes without taking a backup first.

Don’t assume — always verify.

7. Over-Engineering Simple Projects

Early on, I used complex tools like Kubernetes for small apps that didn’t need them.

Lesson:

Use simple tools for small jobs.

Don’t overcomplicate things.

Final Thoughts

Mistakes are normal. What matters is learning from them and growing.

I hope these lessons help you avoid similar issues and become a better DevOps engineer.