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SRE as a Lifestyle Choice
- oftenwrong 7y ago>There was a really interesting talk at Strange Loop this year about how quirks in code layout fool programmers into chasing their tails thinking they’re improving performance when they’re not. I think the author may be referring to this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TLSBdHe1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TLSBdHe1A
- robocat 7y agoAbsoluteky astounding take on optimisation - one example uses techniques to get 25% speedup in SQLite - wow! I couldn't find discussion on HN - maybe because YouTube doesn't have canonical link addresses for videos?
- yanowitz 7y agoThis is a fantastic talk. Well worth the time spent watching it.
- jedberg 7y agotl;dr: We applied the principles of root cause analysis to a non-technical process (hiring) and it made things better. You should still read the article though, it has a lot of eye-opening info about how broken government hiring is.
- klyrs 7y agoTenth paragraph defines the acronym, "Site Reliability Engineering." Is there enough room to expand that in the title?
- warent 7y agoI think it's very common knowledge that's what the acronym means. I've never worked at a company that didn't just say SRE
- war1025 7y agoNever heard of it before.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Fnoord 7y agoSRE has a lot of different meanings, even in the science & technology world [1]. (I'll refrain from claiming that such is "common knowledge".) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRE
- shantly 7y agoMost companies don't have them at all. Not by that name or anything like it, and if they have anyone kinda doing a similar-ish job you'd probably find their role and practices dissimilar enough that you'd not call them that, either.
- eat 7y agoIt's not.
- icedchai 7y agoDid you Google it? It's the first thing that comes up.
- davidy123 7y agoGoogle customizes results per the logged in user, so "site reliability engineer" wouldn't necessarily be the first result for different people. Random list: https://www.abbreviations.com/SRE https://www.abbreviations.com/SRE
- dvtrn 7y agoIn my org, we're technically called Service Reliability Engineers which is internally appropriate and fitting.
- Fnoord 7y agoIt also stands for Software Reverse Engineering. An example is Ghidra [1] [1] https://ghidra-sre.org https://ghidra-sre.org
- workthrowaway 7y agogoogle made the term popular. there is a book on it that kinda expands on what it entails.
- nokya 7y agoI probably stopped trying to understand what it meant at the 3rd-4th paragraph. I feel I wasn't worth an explanation...
- petard 7y ago"White House HR once tried to reject a candidate whose previous employer was Github because he didn’t specifically list experience with version control on his resume." This happens in the private sector too, had this with an internal recruiter that had no idea about the role and was only checking for keywords.
- fjp 7y agoI always list it under my resume skills for this exact reason
- twblalock 7y agoThis is why those stupid lists of skills are important to include on resumes.
- martius 7y agoThis is why I explicitly avoid these lists and highlight some core tech which should be meaningful for other engineers. I try to use terms specific enough to implicitly include several skills. My intuition is that if my CV is ignored by a recruiter, it's because engineering is not involved enough in the sourcing process for the company, and that is a terrible signal.
- brightball 7y agoAgree with this 100%
- 4ad 7y agoExactly my strateguly as well, seems to work perfectly. Another trick I do is send my CV as a text file with Unix line endings. Engineers would be able to read it easily. Irrelevant recruiters or the HR department, not so much. Sadly Windows notepad in recent versions of Windows 10 can read Unix line endings just fine, although quite a few businesses have not upgraded yet.
- FooHentai 7y agoFrom the other side of the screen, I see a lot of people inside organisation's trying to hire and becoming annoyed when their recruiters send them CVs that aren't ideal matches. So this cuts both ways. If you want engineering to have eyes-on early, that necessarily means they're gonna see some CVs that don't fit. Recruiters tend to avoid this because of the 'signals' they're getting back from their client.
- cagenut 7y agoI thought this was going to be about error-budgeting your carbohydrate SLO in your dietary SLA.
- pram 7y agoSome more blog ideas: Can you apply DevOps thinking to things that don’t involve computers? Can you apply Agile thinking to things that don’t involve computers? Can you apply the UNIX philosophy to things that don’t involve computers?
- ebiester 7y agoApplying agile thinking to everything but software is a cottage industry at this point.
- dekhn 7y agohttps://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ is a mailing list of people with large numbers of references to these ideas being applied outside the computer context.
- wlesieutre 7y agoThe UNIX philosophy comes down to making tools that each do one thing and do it well. It's already the same philosophy as a workshop full of hammers, screwdrivers, squares, saws, planes, etc. Put them together and you can build a cabinet. But you probably wouldn't want a "cabinet making tool" that tries to do every job required in the cabinet making process. If anything, all of the philosophies that we apply to computers and technologies are taken from other areas. Of course you can take them back out and apply them elsewhere! Computers are a very recent addition in the grand scheme of things.
- teaachrighr838 7y agoSRE is a framework of critical thinking applied to computing. Our society seems more interested rigidly regurgitating a customized framework and avoiding critical thinking of their own. It’s better for business, they say, saves money. This is what folks like Cal Newport discuss in Deep Work, and Feynman meant by ignoring other people’s work. Paulo Freire warned about importing others models. This feels too much like thinking SRE is some literal thing. Label life stuff in your own way. That’s having work/life balance, IMO. I don’t want to cart that shit around all the time.
- peterwwillis 7y agoThe lens is that of an SRE, but what the author is basically doing is applying an iterative improvement process, or learning cycle, or decision cycle. There are many examples of them in many industries. Many of them are used to improve quality, but they can also be used to fix crappy process. I find they work best when implemented asynchronously (e.g. an outsider who is pissed off decides to fix the broken thing, and goes around and helps improve different parts of the process)
- walshemj 7y agoVery interesting read as I am considering a Grade 6 or 7 Technical role in the UK civil service (right at the top end of the GS scale) and am looking at how they recruit and to tailor my cv to suit. I am lucky in that I have done board style interviews before and have contacts who know how the system that most UK techies wont have. I think Marianne ought to touch base with Loren DeJonge Schulman at War on the rocks as She has written on the hiring challenges the US government faces
- jkoberg 7y agoWhat the hell is SRE?
- adrianpike 7y agoSite Reliability Engineering
- detaro 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21193903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21193903
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hunter-gatherer 7y agoWorking in tech in the government, this resonated with me. The author summarized things well. Another problem in my agency is that only HR is allowed to construct job postings. We provide inputs, but they put it all together. I have seen this work against us consistently. We also aren't allowed any variance during interviews. All interview questions must be identical across all interviewees. This rule prohibits follow-up questions. Believe it or not, it is difficult to have a meaningful interview and to properly guage one's experience with thid handicap. Apologies for errors. I'm on mobile.
- CobrastanJorji 7y agoThis was a fantastic and enlightening read, thank you. I'm always impressed when I read about the exploits of the US Digital Service. As I understand it, they have basically no direct power. They can walk in, say "I'm here from the White House," and anything beyond that is chutzpah, effort, and nightmare-difficulty cat herding. Getting whole departments to volunteer to try a different hiring program from that humble starting point is staggeringly impressive, and I think the author's underselling it.