4 ms·

According to the first of the SRE books, engineers working under the SRE banner are expected to devote approximately 50% to operational activities and 50% to en

According to the first of the SRE books, engineers working under the SRE banner are expected to devote approximately 50% to operational activities and 50% to engineering intended to make the other 50% easier. Given that the usual ration is 100% : -100%, 50:50 is going to be helpful in escaping capability traps.

smueller1234 7y ago
It's actually "at most 50% on toil". But of course it's also hard to measure exactly. It's more of a barrier that if we exceed it, the team probably needs serious help! Ultimately, Google engineers can move between teams pretty freely, so if we allow a team to descend into an operational or a deadline-induced death march, and we don't address that quickly, chances are the engineers will move to another team. It's sometimes frustrating not to have more control as a manager, but it's a very nicely self correcting mechanism and fixes various incentives for us managers. (I'm a manager in Google SRE. Not speaking for Google.)
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  I like the idea of at least targeting a high fraction of total bandwidth for "making stuff better". My reference to "capability traps" wasn't accidental, it's a serious risk to any business where maintenance and improvement has low observability vs production outputs[0]. In that situation economists rightly predict that effort is skewed towards what can be observed more easily ("equal compensation principle")[1]. Under those conditions it's easier to fix a time-spent target and observe time allocated, even if only approximately. [0] https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning%3DSterman_CMR_su01_.pdf https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning%3DSterman_CMR_su01... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem#Contract_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

4 ms·

According to the first of the SRE books, engineers working under the SRE banner are expected to devote approximately 50% to operational activities and 50% to en

by jacques_chester 7y ago

smueller1234 7y ago
It's actually "at most 50% on toil". But of course it's also hard to measure exactly. It's more of a barrier that if we exceed it, the team probably needs serious help! Ultimately, Google engineers can move between teams pretty freely, so if we allow a team to descend into an operational or a deadline-induced death march, and we don't address that quickly, chances are the engineers will move to another team. It's sometimes frustrating not to have more control as a manager, but it's a very nicely self correcting mechanism and fixes various incentives for us managers. (I'm a manager in Google SRE. Not speaking for Google.)
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  I like the idea of at least targeting a high fraction of total bandwidth for "making stuff better". My reference to "capability traps" wasn't accidental, it's a serious risk to any business where maintenance and improvement has low observability vs production outputs[0]. In that situation economists rightly predict that effort is skewed towards what can be observed more easily ("equal compensation principle")[1]. Under those conditions it's easier to fix a time-spent target and observe time allocated, even if only approximately. [0] https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning%3DSterman_CMR_su01_.pdf https://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning%3DSterman_CMR_su01... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem#Contract_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...