The entire conversation around "ops-less" systems ignores that in most cases the Ops folks are stronger engineers than the SWEs. If a company wants to ditch Ops they'll need to pay far more money for SWEs, expect a higher competency in engineering tasks, and good luck ever outsourcing again.
Engineering is not writing code. Writing code is what you do to implement something you've engineered. Ops may not be better at writing code, but in every organization in my career they've been stronger engineers.
