If I had to do it again? Avoid going down the operations path. Not because the knowledge wasn't valuable, but I always enjoyed working on bigger programming projects more than tinkering with other people's big programming projects (Linux, Ansible, AWS, Cisco, etc). Having operations on my resume, however, pigeon-holed me into a particular role professionally.

Of course, that's not of much use for anyone else. In fact, I'd recommend getting operations experience to more programmers, if only because we always need more people. But I also understand why more people don't aim to get operations experience.