This is a great post but I want to say that I feel there's space for both. IMO a DevOps Engineer would sit between the sysadmin/network folks and the developers who wants to be users of a system.
In my current gig we've moved from the DevOps department to the Platform department as it aligns more with what we are trying to provide. A Platform for developers.
That said we essentially can speak sysadmin and can speak developers. We trust sysadmins with network, linux image and more specialist topics. We make tools for both sides and try to make them work together often sitting in the middle and negotiating.
In my current gig we've moved from the DevOps department to the Platform department as it aligns more with what we are trying to provide. A Platform for developers.
That said we essentially can speak sysadmin and can speak developers. We trust sysadmins with network, linux image and more specialist topics. We make tools for both sides and try to make them work together often sitting in the middle and negotiating.