DevOps engineers need to balance meaningful work and toil to stay happy. They prefer challenging tasks like R&D, platform improvements and coding new functions to managerial chores like managing infrastructure, scheduling builds and emailing other teams when developers commit code. Sometimes the boring, repetitive tasks can consume far too much of engineers’ time. When they're mired in low-value work, productivity and workplace morale suffer, slowing down release cycles and resulting in substandard code. That's not a recipe for success. It's a cycle of distress.