Yeah, operations-focused engineers will continue to have a niche carved out for them because too many devs black-box infrastructure.
Companies can either choose to have their devs take on ops responsibilities or continue having dedicated ops jobs.
In either case, whether or not dedicated ops jobs exist, ops responsibilities always will. I'll be there to pick up the slack because designing and maintaining systems is an interesting job that has to be done that a lot of people can't/won't do and it pays accordingly.
I can relate to every sentence you wrote, minus certain details.
I like and enjoy my coworkers but our respective interests are too dissimilar. The interactions at work never go deeper than the current objective or niceties. This is completely fine (for now) but in the future I would love to be on a true team.
Going home is indeed meh. As much as it feels nice to unwind, I'd much rather unwind with my gang.
I used to be on a sports team and lived morning, day, and night with my boys. Even though life was chaotic, it was incredible to have a gang. One thing I know for certain is that I could do more to gain that back. Short-term I plan on (1) joining an adult sports league and (2) hit up the super interesting people I've met since moving.
But long-term I believe lifestyle redesign is the only solution to our highly atomized world. I look to the past for ideas.
Companies can either choose to have their devs take on ops responsibilities or continue having dedicated ops jobs.
In either case, whether or not dedicated ops jobs exist, ops responsibilities always will. I'll be there to pick up the slack because designing and maintaining systems is an interesting job that has to be done that a lot of people can't/won't do and it pays accordingly.