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Uber is really strapped for engineering talent. Especially when it comes for SRE. Myself and many friends working SRE at various Bay Area companies get consiste

Uber is really strapped for engineering talent. Especially when it comes for SRE. Myself and many friends working SRE at various Bay Area companies get consistently hit up for free lunches and interviews. It's really weird considering that their stack doesn't NEED to be this complex....

joeblau 10y ago
It probably could be more simplistic. It seems like with enough engineers every company I've ever worked at eventually ends up using every technology they can because of the one thing it does well.
- r2dnb 10y ago
  >because of the one thing it does well. This "one thing it does well" business is then presented as : "using the right tool for the right job" and it's difficult to argue against that because the counterpart can easily deride you as a fanatic of some technology, someone not objective enough, etc... It is however interesting that we used relational databases for virtually everything for decades even though SQL is suboptimal at most things if we take them in isolation. Some will argue that people are now realizing their mistake, but the truth is these companies were successful and we were all getting our paychecks. (PS: I choose to use NoSQL for virtually all my projects) The real driver shouldn't be the one thing it does well. Many times - if not most of the time - it's preferable to use a tool optimal for the most important parts and suboptimal for the rest. I personally prefer to provision two more instances, than to add two more technology stacks.
  - rantanplan 10y ago
    > It is however interesting that we used relational databases for virtually everything for decades even though SQL is suboptimal at most things You have no clue what SQL or ACIDity is. For 99% of the cases SQL/RDBMS is the right choice. You probably think you belong in that 1%, but from your comment, I suspect you do not. > I choose to use NoSQL for virtually all my projects That's because you have no important data to store. When you get to store data that are important to your customers you're gonna have a big revelation.
    - anonx 10y ago
      >> You have no clue what SQL or ACIDity is. "NOSQL" doesn't mean "no ACID". There are plenty of NOSQL DBs that are ACID compliant. And SQL is not the only way to write your queries. There are a lot more QLs.
      - rantanplan 10y ago
        Even though what you say it's true, my comment is still correct and relevant to the OP. Also, of the NoSQL DBs that support ACID, I wouldn't touch them for any serious work or primary data at least. None of them are battle-tested in the same way Postgres is for example. And again, people who really need these type of DBs fall into the 1%, and I'm being very generous.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      Why do you think NoSQL means not important data? MongoDB eats data but I am not sure every NoSQL database does. NoSQL does add certain kinds of complexity, but also simplifies certain problems. Depends where your hard problems are..
      - rantanplan 10y ago
        Because in the 2 decades I'm in the industry I see RDBMS make the world spin and NoSQL DBs destroying companies and families. MongoDB and CouchDB eat data for breakfast, I know that from 1st hand experience. And all the others DBs that claim that do not keep cropping up in Aphyr's blog. I ain't saying that all NoSQL dbs are useless. I'm just saying that proposing and choosing an RDBMS solution is going to be the right choice for 99% of the projects. Yes, most people think that they belong in that 1% where they have the infrastructure problems and big data of Google, FB and Twitter but.... they don't.
        threeseed 10y ago
        In the last 2 decades in the industry as well I've never lost data with MongoDB, Riak or Cassandra but have with Oracle, DB2 and PostgreSQL. After all databases are just software and there will always be bugs. Some people just get tripped up by different ones. And you are woefully ignorant to think the RDBMS is the right choice for 99% of projects. Especially since you think that the 1% of remaining users are purely worried about scalability. Hint: think about the schema problems associated with storing auto generated features from deep learning models.
brown9-2 10y ago
It's really weird considering that their stack doesn't NEED to be this complex.... This is such a silly statement to make from the outside of any organization.
GarrisonPrime 10y ago
If they made it only as simple as it needs to be, then they couldn't patent very much. Investors want exclusivity, lots of convoluted tech-speak, big grants, etc. :P
dominotw 10y ago
what are some of the skills/experience needed to be an SRE? I've been having a really hard time finding a job due to being a 'jack of all trades' and having no specialty. Just an assumption. I have over a decade of experience building webapps. I've spent over 500 hrs on interviews over the past 3 months doing countless coding tests/exercises, whiteboard interviews. I just seem to never get past on-site interviews.
- jedberg 10y ago
  > I have over a decade of experience building web apps. Were you also running those apps? SRE means you understand the intricacies of running an app too. When I hire SREs, I look for people who have the following skills, in this order: 1. Leadership under pressure. What I mean is can you stay cool and calm and keep everyone around you cool and calm when everything is melting down 2. Experience operating a platform. Do you know basics like networking, system startup, system and OS tuning, etc. Can you diagnose a problem on a running instance? 3. Coding. Can you write decent code and can you understand good code. The reason it is in that order is because staying cool under pressure is something I can't really teach you, it's just sort of innate for the most part. Coding can be learned.

joeblau 10y ago

It probably could be more simplistic. It seems like with enough engineers every company I've ever worked at eventually ends up using every technology they can because of the one thing it does well.

r2dnb 10y ago
>because of the one thing it does well. This "one thing it does well" business is then presented as : "using the right tool for the right job" and it's difficult to argue against that because the counterpart can easily deride you as a fanatic of some technology, someone not objective enough, etc... It is however interesting that we used relational databases for virtually everything for decades even though SQL is suboptimal at most things if we take them in isolation. Some will argue that people are now realizing their mistake, but the truth is these companies were successful and we were all getting our paychecks. (PS: I choose to use NoSQL for virtually all my projects) The real driver shouldn't be the one thing it does well. Many times - if not most of the time - it's preferable to use a tool optimal for the most important parts and suboptimal for the rest. I personally prefer to provision two more instances, than to add two more technology stacks.
- rantanplan 10y ago
  > It is however interesting that we used relational databases for virtually everything for decades even though SQL is suboptimal at most things You have no clue what SQL or ACIDity is. For 99% of the cases SQL/RDBMS is the right choice. You probably think you belong in that 1%, but from your comment, I suspect you do not. > I choose to use NoSQL for virtually all my projects That's because you have no important data to store. When you get to store data that are important to your customers you're gonna have a big revelation.
  - anonx 10y ago
    >> You have no clue what SQL or ACIDity is. "NOSQL" doesn't mean "no ACID". There are plenty of NOSQL DBs that are ACID compliant. And SQL is not the only way to write your queries. There are a lot more QLs.
    - rantanplan 10y ago
      Even though what you say it's true, my comment is still correct and relevant to the OP. Also, of the NoSQL DBs that support ACID, I wouldn't touch them for any serious work or primary data at least. None of them are battle-tested in the same way Postgres is for example. And again, people who really need these type of DBs fall into the 1%, and I'm being very generous.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Why do you think NoSQL means not important data? MongoDB eats data but I am not sure every NoSQL database does. NoSQL does add certain kinds of complexity, but also simplifies certain problems. Depends where your hard problems are..
    - rantanplan 10y ago
      Because in the 2 decades I'm in the industry I see RDBMS make the world spin and NoSQL DBs destroying companies and families. MongoDB and CouchDB eat data for breakfast, I know that from 1st hand experience. And all the others DBs that claim that do not keep cropping up in Aphyr's blog. I ain't saying that all NoSQL dbs are useless. I'm just saying that proposing and choosing an RDBMS solution is going to be the right choice for 99% of the projects. Yes, most people think that they belong in that 1% where they have the infrastructure problems and big data of Google, FB and Twitter but.... they don't.
      - threeseed 10y ago
        In the last 2 decades in the industry as well I've never lost data with MongoDB, Riak or Cassandra but have with Oracle, DB2 and PostgreSQL. After all databases are just software and there will always be bugs. Some people just get tripped up by different ones. And you are woefully ignorant to think the RDBMS is the right choice for 99% of projects. Especially since you think that the 1% of remaining users are purely worried about scalability. Hint: think about the schema problems associated with storing auto generated features from deep learning models.

brown9-2 10y ago

It's really weird considering that their stack doesn't NEED to be this complex.... This is such a silly statement to make from the outside of any organization.

GarrisonPrime 10y ago

If they made it only as simple as it needs to be, then they couldn't patent very much. Investors want exclusivity, lots of convoluted tech-speak, big grants, etc. :P

dominotw 10y ago

what are some of the skills/experience needed to be an SRE? I've been having a really hard time finding a job due to being a 'jack of all trades' and having no specialty. Just an assumption. I have over a decade of experience building webapps. I've spent over 500 hrs on interviews over the past 3 months doing countless coding tests/exercises, whiteboard interviews. I just seem to never get past on-site interviews.

jedberg 10y ago
> I have over a decade of experience building web apps. Were you also running those apps? SRE means you understand the intricacies of running an app too. When I hire SREs, I look for people who have the following skills, in this order: 1. Leadership under pressure. What I mean is can you stay cool and calm and keep everyone around you cool and calm when everything is melting down 2. Experience operating a platform. Do you know basics like networking, system startup, system and OS tuning, etc. Can you diagnose a problem on a running instance? 3. Coding. Can you write decent code and can you understand good code. The reason it is in that order is because staying cool under pressure is something I can't really teach you, it's just sort of innate for the most part. Coding can be learned.