{"id":662,"date":"2021-09-30T09:58:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T23:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/?p=662"},"modified":"2023-12-13T15:28:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T05:28:02","slug":"sre-not-monolithic-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/sre-not-monolithic-role\/","title":{"rendered":"SRE is not a monolithic role"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>SRE is gaining more traction and a misconception is gaining steam among senior stakeholders. That SRE is a monolith role like what \u201cprogrammers\u201d were in the 90s. Let\u2019s burst that misconception\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">SRE is a broad, overarching responsibility that needs a multitude of role considerations to pull off properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">It is not a monolithic role where all SREs do pretty much the same thing. Like what programmers were in the 90s \u2014 they (supposedly) all pumped out code in similar strokes. Now we have front-end engineers, back-end engineers and everything in-between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">SRE is the same \u2014 a m\u00e9lange of diverse role opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I will cover the nuances of SRE roles in more detail below.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"no-sres-are-not\">No, SREs are not\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\n<ul class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\n<li><strong>working<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>one-size-fits-all roles<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2014 their scope of work will depend on the needs of the software systems they are responsible for e.g. more alerting if responsible for critical services<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>ops-on-steroids<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2014 a highly-skilled site reliability engineer should not get pigeonholed full-time into Sysadmin tasks like running Bash scripts or spooling VMs<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>stereotypical introverts<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2014 they are capable of being technicians&nbsp;<em>and<\/em>&nbsp;leaders with vocal contributions to areas like architecture, project management and team collaboration<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>able to offer turnkey SRE on their own<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2014 an individual may be able to \u201crun SRE\u201d for a smaller org with limited scope but won\u2019t come close to the full scope of the SRE domain (it\u2019s HUGE)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/main--blissful-leavitt-937a96.netlify.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/SRE-scope-of-work.png\" alt=\"Site Reliability Engineering capability map - partial view of the work that SRE teams may engage in over the span of their function \" class=\"wp-image-1095\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Above: a glimpse of the SREpath capability map that SRE leaders use to plan teams<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"sres-have-a-wide-scope-of-available-work\">SREs have a wide scope of available work<\/h2>\n\n\n<ul class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\n<li>More likely to call for T-shaped abilities where you are a specialist in a certain area but have a breadth of knowledge to be \u201cdangerous enough\u201d in many related areas<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Solid SRE teams benefit from a combination of generalist and specialist engineers \u2014 you might have an SRE working across many responsibility areas while another may solely focus on Chaos<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Roles may become more fluid in the future \u2014 SRE leaders may guide individual SREs toward broader responsibilities within 1-2 responsibility areas like performance engineering, QA etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"sres-work-on-systems-and-software-at-the-same-time\">SREs work on systems and software at the same time<\/h2>\n\n\n<ul class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\n<li>Some SREs are systems pros with a reasonable ability to code their way out of trouble<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Other SREs are code mavens who want to get their hands dirty with infrastructure work<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>While others still are neither and learn enough code to modify open-source tools to their needs and they learn enough systems to make sure IPv6 won\u2019t (hopefully) make life harder<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Whatever they do, SREs should spend at least half of their time on automation, move away from toil and otherwise improve systems (proactive) rather than respond to incidents (reactive)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"sres-can-be-injected-across-the-enterprise\">SREs can be injected across the enterprise<\/h2>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">SRE roles can be designed to embed into various levels of the enterprise. The SaFE Agile Framework is the most popular agile framework among mid-level and larger companies. Its steering group has already worked out how SRE can fit into the various levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I\u2019ve broken down the roles and responsibilities below:<\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"servicelevel-sres\">Service-level SREs<\/h3>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Entry-to-mid-level SREs who are responsible for a single service<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\n<li>Provide app-level support for critical software services<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Implement tools and teach for more seamless DevOps<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Own SLOs and error budgets for their service<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"systemlevel-sres\">System-level SREs<\/h3>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Senior SREs who help release train engineers manage multiple services<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\n<li>Coordinate multiple product streams in the release train<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Guide system architecture and production readiness<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Own SLOs and error-budget tracking across the system<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"enterpriselevel-sres\">Enterprise-level SREs<\/h3>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Most senior-level of SREs reporting direct to CTOs<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\n<li>Run SRE center of excellence (CoE) for the enterprise<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Develop SRE platform and best practices<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Architecture support<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"in-conclusion\">In conclusion\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Doing SRE well means the difference between high-performance software and painful 50<em>x<\/em>&nbsp;errors. So let\u2019s get our SRE team roles done right and not mistake SRE as a monolith role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SRE is gaining more traction and a misconception is gaining steam among senior stakeholders. That SRE is a monolith role like what \u201cprogrammers\u201d were in the 90s. Let\u2019s burst that misconception\u2026 SRE is a broad, overarching responsibility that needs a multitude of role considerations to pull off properly. It is not a monolithic role where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5774,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions\/5774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}