Wow, message received HN. Don't make fun of Devops! It doesn't seem that long ago that it was hailed as the silver bullet that eliminates the "throw it over the wall" mentality that causes issues exactly like this one.
This issue was caused by a failure in communication between team members. That communication is just as important as good engineering.
Your comment was obviously meant as commentary on the DevOps trend, but in fact devops is not so well-defined a trend to make a good target for sniping comments like this. I mean, people talk about "devops" today to mostly just say "we must increase investment in our infrastructure." No one's saying "devops will fix everything." So I don't think people downvoted you for cutting on devops per se, as much as for not presenting any clear POV.
It's not like Node, where evangelists DO go around saying it's the best thing ever and blindly ignore the problems with it. Now... there's a good target for snippy remarks! :-P
I would interpret the message as "Don't make fun," not "Don't make fun of Devops." If you have a technical point to make, being sarcastic and curt is one of the worst possible ways to accurately convey that technical point.
Furthermore, if Stripe already uses devops, then your statement adds nothing to the conversation (maybe this follow-up comment would have, but your original comment didn't), and if they don't, then commentary about a practice that wasn't being used is the definition of an off-topic comment. So in either case, your comment is worthy of downvotes, regardless of the merits of its topic.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone downvoted on HN for being opposed to established wisdom with good reason. I've often seen people downvoted who were being opposed to either established or non-established wisdom in a way that doesn't contribute productively to the conversation. They weren't being downvoted for their beliefs, but for their lack of productive contribution to the conversation.
