{"id":665,"date":"2021-08-31T22:07:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T12:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/?p=665"},"modified":"2023-12-13T15:28:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T05:28:02","slug":"sre-unique-approach-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/sre-unique-approach-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"How SREs are unique in their approach to work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) are a rare bunch in the software community. But there\u2019s little denying that the approach of Site Reliability Engineering is the future of software operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some things that make SREs a unique breed in software work:<\/p>\n\n\n

SREs look at the broader picture<\/h2>\n\n\n

Ask any developer what they\u2019re working on and you\u2019ll see a tiny sliver of the whole codebase. That makes sense for the kind of work that is coding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Systems, on the other hand, need a holistic view<\/strong> in order to make sure the whole unit works harmoniously.<\/p>\n\n\n

SREs thrive in ambiguity<\/h2>\n\n\n

Because they have a scope spanning the entirety of a software system, SREs can end up working on various types of problems. Some problems may be well-defined like spooling up infrastructure based on known demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other problems may be more abstract like working out how to cost-effectively autoscale a service that has inconsistent usage patterns and needs high performance.<\/p>\n\n\n

SREs work beyond constraints like Scrum<\/h2>\n\n\n

Most developers work within some kind of agile framework like Scrum or XP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some SREs also do that for planned software build work. That essentially timeboxes their efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That might work for estimable problems but does not always work for production-level work<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can an SRE stop working on a problem because it does not fit into the mold of a sprint? That could spell disaster for production software. Daniel Wilhite answers the question of\u00a0\u201cCan scrum be used effectively by SRE teams?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

SREs don\u2019t stay in their lane<\/h2>\n\n\n

You\u2019d expect SREs to get used to developers throwing the code over the wall, but no. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many Site Reliability Engineers began their careers as developers<\/strong>, so they will spend a large part of their time coding up solutions for infrastructure and software performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, they may participate in feature teams as a means of job rotation. This helps them get a better understanding of their developer counterparts\u2019 priorities. <\/p>\n\n\n

SREs don\u2019t have a monolith job description<\/h2>\n\n\n

SREs come in many shapes and sizes. In smaller companies, a single SRE may be the one-stop-shop for all site reliability matters. As a company gets larger, SRE roles may get divided into specialized work<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, one SRE may focus on platforms like Kubernetes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another SRE may spend their time supporting developers in taking up DevSecOps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet another may have general SRE responsibilities with the addition of Chaos Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n

Comparison with software developers<\/h2>\n\n\n

Both roles are chalk and cheese, so it\u2019s worth considering key differences in how SREs work compared to software developers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chances are they will need to collaborate closely to make sure the software works well in production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took inspiration from a Google recruiter\u2019s interview of an SRE, Ciara Kamahele (link here<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key differences I uncovered are in table form below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Comparison<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There you have it. SREs may be popularly known as software developers who happen to run systems, but they are quite unique in how they work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) are a rare bunch in the software community. But there\u2019s little denying that the approach of Site Reliability Engineering is the future of software operations. Here are some things that make SREs a unique breed in software work: SREs look at the broader picture Ask any developer what they\u2019re working on […]<\/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":[13,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665"}],"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=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5775,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions\/5775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sysmit.com\/cf22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}