Counterpoint: the dev is doing this to remain employable, so that they can ensure higher success in the future for themselves.

Their goals simply don't align those of ops and are at best parallel with those of the company as a whole - of course it's to be expected that they'll attempt to prioritize their own when there's a lack of governance and oversight within the company.

It's something that i've noticed more and more, yet is something that noone really talks about - people wanting to use bleeding edge technologies just because they're at the top of their hype curve: wanting to implement microservices when they're just maintaining monoliths and there's no need for them.

Personally, i'm an advocate of both microservices (or at the very least modular monoliths), containers and many of the new technologies, with the exception that i've initially tried all of those out in personal projects in the evenings and weekends. Yet what is the person who doesn't code outside of work supposed to do to remain employable? Would you expect a doctor to practice new types of surgery in their own time? Actually, why don't companies fund a week every few months for their developers to upskill themselves? Just a bit of time that's treated like a vacation, but during which they're expected to hack together prototypes etc.? Clearly most companies out there don't do greenfield or pilot projects, so something like this could help.

I don't think i have any good answers for this, but it definitely deserves more consideration!