I'm an SRE. Both the OP article and the YouTube video are making generalizations that aren't really accurate. There's two positions called "SREs", SRE-SWE and

I'm an SRE. Both the OP article and the YouTube video are making generalizations that aren't really accurate. There's two positions called "SREs", SRE-SWE and SRE-SA. SRE-SWE has to pass a full software interview, and are equivalent to SWEs working for other departments. SRE-SA are not expected to have Google-level software engineering skills, but make up for that in other knowledge areas.