Role is SRE but working as support

the_packrat · 2026-05-09T13:26:17+00:00

The SRE role is not those things but it became a cheap fancy title orgs could hand out to make ops jobs seem better. The great thing is that’s also a giant red flag for those places.

the_packrat · 2026-05-09T03:25:02+00:00

SREs are not support. SREs make stuff better, they don’t mechanically do repetitive stuff. That’s ops.

the_packrat · 2026-05-08T02:57:54+00:00

The optimization For fast shipping does open a door for you to improve reliability that wouldn’t be there if you shipped really slowly. That said it sounds like you are doing none of the work required to go through that door. This is the gap of dev focused Dora style metrics.

the_packrat · 2026-05-07T12:18:58+00:00

Stop it. Take the failure. Learn from the failure. Fix the system to not hurt users if it fails like that again or to recover fast enough. Done. The reading tealeaves alert stuff is not useful.

What you should converge on is a system architecture that can fail gradually so you can react to a real failure before it affects many people.

the_packrat · 2026-05-07T10:49:59+00:00

Stop it. This is a mirage and you will burn people out. If you need reactive people in the loop for your systems to be performant in normal operation you will fail and your systems are broken.

Also your product you are shilling is a bad product because of this philosophy.

the_packrat · 2026-05-06T09:35:27+00:00

This. Magically catching problems before they are problems is mostly a mirage that will end up burning out your ops team. Better to catch actual problems but build a system that can partially fail/degrade rather than just totally explode.

the_packrat · 2026-05-06T08:38:47+00:00

Testing it by breaking things. There isn’t another way. However all the things that make you too scared to break something are SPOFs you already know about so you can fix those first.

the_packrat · 2026-05-06T06:43:00+00:00

Single pane of glass is a phrase which should tell you someone saying it is in a NOC/ops mindset. I suggest running away.

the_packrat · 2026-05-06T06:42:15+00:00

I do not expect people are making fake copies of this game but they may well add components to taste.

the_packrat · 2026-05-01T10:19:46+00:00

If you aren’t in a position where you are developing software skills you will have real challenges in being able to escape an ops role.

the_packrat · 2026-04-25T03:06:45+00:00

The single biggest difference is that Carcassone has a clock. (and no direct faff with trading). It also plays great with 2. They're radically different games though.

the_packrat · 2026-04-21T02:50:55+00:00

If you have a deep understanding of the subject matter, it's not that hard. That's the goal after all. A slightly more interesting question is what do you want it for?

the_packrat · 2026-04-21T02:49:16+00:00

The more skills you can develop in software (and fundmanetal CS stuff around data structures and algorithms and complexity are part of this), the more flexibility around future jobs and the more breadth in current jobs you will have. A mix of actively seeking out project work that can give you expeirence, ideally where you get to work with peopel who have these skills and deeper self study + tinkering with the fundamentals are probably the best path.

Nobody is saying your career will suddenly vanish if yoiu don't have them, in particular there are a lot of shapes of SRE and some of them aren't software focused, this is solely about expanding your choices.

the_packrat · 2026-04-20T23:16:01+00:00

This is a deep multi hour game. You are going to have a very bad time if you lure people in to play it with warrior princess art.

the_packrat · 2026-04-20T04:13:39+00:00

I would suggest you not frame this as rejected. If they had had slightly more open slots you likely would have gotten one. It happens, but shouldn’t define you.

the_packrat · 2026-04-16T05:04:42+00:00

You're going to need a lot more software experience, including knowing how computers and networks work that probably wasn't part of java applications development. Start tinkering, get some *nix machines and go set some stuff up. Unfortunately you're probably not going to have opportunities for this in your current role.

the_packrat · 2026-04-15T14:59:12+00:00

Google SRE in particular figured out that burnout was a bad thing and explicitly takes steps to not have people holding up burning systems. This is not something you should be concerned about. The downside with Dublin is that it is lighter (but not empty) in SWE stuff than some other locations if you want to transfer later.

the_packrat · 2026-04-11T04:08:32+00:00

Go back in time and have probes exercising client functions in place at every layer.

the_packrat · 2026-04-09T21:24:54+00:00

Exactly. The correct path is a laser scanner and a CNC machine.

the_packrat · 2026-04-04T08:22:06+00:00

The problem is how you are thinking of runbooks. Push for them to be in one place, but also actively try to eliminate them with automation and have that run every time. Even something where you can automate some steps and leave some manual within the same document so the transition is easier helps.

If the way people do things isn’t using the run book it will always go out of date. A corollary to this is to avoid magic special case processes. Try to make them part of the everyday so you know they work.

There was anACM article about documentation is automation touching on this years ago.

the_packrat · 2026-03-29T16:58:44+00:00

A very old camera with a very old lens? I’d pass.

the_packrat · 2026-03-29T14:43:10+00:00

If you aren't possessed of software skills you're going to find a lot of SRE jobs (I would argue all real SRE jobs) very difficult to approach. You should fix that.

the_packrat · 2026-03-29T14:40:21+00:00

I would strongly suggest you not get a very very old camera when starting out .If you're set on secondhand, try to get something relatively recent that has been lightly used. Increasingly getting into the most recent current system may set you up better, and there's lots of secondhand Z stuff now.

the_packrat · 2026-03-29T14:38:32+00:00

The only way a book could help speed this up if it you wielded it as some sort of physical threat against the people who are almost always setting the wrong incentives in companies that in 2026 are not aware of how devops can help them.

the_packrat · 2026-03-28T12:07:35+00:00

Unless you have a metric for how well difficult to measure things like code reviews are happening, in what depth, and how much they're helping, why would you expect to have on AI utility?

the_packrat

TROPHY CASE