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I work at a web host, and my SRE title means being being a developer who gets constantly interrupted by alerts and customer chats.

by imesh 9y ago

a_imho 9y ago
Do you earn a developer salary?
- poikniok 9y ago
  I would presume more than a developer salary.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    IME, it is safer to assume they are NOT paying him for knowledge across multiple roles. It's a business win to find someone with multi-disciplinary skills without having to pay them the combined salary of those disciplines. It's even possible they are only paying him a developer's salary.
nandemo 9y ago
Unless you're working a startup that's intentionally "doing things that don't scale" (because e.g. you're still yet to get to product-market fit), I can't see how it makes sense for a developer or SRE to get interrupted by "customer chats". As for endless alerts, I've been learning that there are 3 types: • false alerts, which were set up "just in case". The "handling" tends to be "take a look, declare that nothing is wrong after all, mark it solved". Your job is to summarily eliminate these. • "good" alerts that indicate a temporary problem that could/should be handled automatically in an ideal world, but can't be handled automatically as things stand; your job is to move the status quo in the direction of the ideal world, gradually. • all the rest. These are the unavoidable alerts. Usually, the best you can do is to ensure the alert message and related logs provide all the relevant information necessary to handle it. PS: of course, TFA indicates Google has a much more systematic approach, but you probably won't be able to just copy them.
user5994461 9y ago
1) Fix the alert 2) Fix the root cause definitely 3) Delete the alert If you can't do any of that, just delete the alert, and also, that means you are not SRE, you are a powerless ops monkey who's getting spammed by other people's alerts (very common in many bad places).
hackermailman 9y ago
This is also what I've assumed SRE really means, plus being on call to put out fires in the middle of the night. I can't begin to imagine the hell that is trying to string hundreds of buggy containers on top of buggy kernels on top of buggy VMs and applying daily patches that don't collapse this complexity house of cards. If anybody can handle this without burning out in a few months they probably don't pay you enough

I work at a web host, and my SRE title means being being a developer who gets constantly interrupted by alerts and customer chats.

by imesh 9y ago

I work at a web host, and my SRE title means being being a developer who gets constantly interrupted by alerts and customer chats.

a_imho 9y ago

Do you earn a developer salary?

poikniok 9y ago
I would presume more than a developer salary.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  IME, it is safer to assume they are NOT paying him for knowledge across multiple roles. It's a business win to find someone with multi-disciplinary skills without having to pay them the combined salary of those disciplines. It's even possible they are only paying him a developer's salary.

nandemo 9y ago

Unless you're working a startup that's intentionally "doing things that don't scale" (because e.g. you're still yet to get to product-market fit), I can't see how it makes sense for a developer or SRE to get interrupted by "customer chats". As for endless alerts, I've been learning that there are 3 types: • false alerts, which were set up "just in case". The "handling" tends to be "take a look, declare that nothing is wrong after all, mark it solved". Your job is to summarily eliminate these. • "good" alerts that indicate a temporary problem that could/should be handled automatically in an ideal world, but can't be handled automatically as things stand; your job is to move the status quo in the direction of the ideal world, gradually. • all the rest. These are the unavoidable alerts. Usually, the best you can do is to ensure the alert message and related logs provide all the relevant information necessary to handle it. PS: of course, TFA indicates Google has a much more systematic approach, but you probably won't be able to just copy them.

user5994461 9y ago

1) Fix the alert 2) Fix the root cause definitely 3) Delete the alert If you can't do any of that, just delete the alert, and also, that means you are not SRE, you are a powerless ops monkey who's getting spammed by other people's alerts (very common in many bad places).

hackermailman 9y ago

This is also what I've assumed SRE really means, plus being on call to put out fires in the middle of the night. I can't begin to imagine the hell that is trying to string hundreds of buggy containers on top of buggy kernels on top of buggy VMs and applying daily patches that don't collapse this complexity house of cards. If anybody can handle this without burning out in a few months they probably don't pay you enough