**Parent Topic**: [[Software/README]] ## Core Distinction Schlossnagle opens *Web Operations* by separating a *career* — an occupation pursued over a significant portion of one's life, with opportunities for progress — from a *job*, which is "just a paid position of regular employment." Web operations is too often treated as a job because the field moves so fast (changing significantly quarter to quarter) that practitioners never pause to reflect on what they do or why. ## The Frontier Problem The Web in its current form has barely crossed a single generational marker. To have completed a *full* career in web operations, you would have had to practice the art longer than it has existed — which no one has. This makes every practitioner a **frontiersman**: there is no finished exemplar to imitate, only the pursuit itself. "In the end, it is the pursuit that matters." ## Why It Matters Treating ops as a career, not a job, is the precondition for everything else in the chapter — knowledge, tools, experience, and discipline only accrue if you commit to the long arc. See [[Four Pursuits of Operational Mastery]]. --- *Source: [[Web Operations]] (Allspaw & Robbins, O'Reilly 2010) — Ch 1 — Web Operations: The Career*