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One of the functions that SRE provides in our organization is building out the platform and solving cross-cutting problems. How do you do that without some repo

One of the functions that SRE provides in our organization is building out the platform and solving cross-cutting problems. How do you do that without some reporting structure? Shared ownership and guilds can only go so far since each team has its own priorities and incentives (and will rarely choose to yield engineering time to platform things if they can devote it to product things). I’m not arguing against an embedded model, but I do think there’s tension that’s not easily resolved.

aluminussoma 4y ago
In my division, there is an infrastructure team and product teams. Those platform type projects are handled by the infrastructure team. In a product only team, it will always be difficult to work on such projects. Ultimately, the answer ties back into the identity question: what is SRE?
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  In our org, we have SRE who handle platform and SRE who are embedded on product teams, but all report up through the SRE org. One of the goals is to spread more infrastructure knowledge to the engineering teams to reduce their dependence on SRE so that SRE is mostly doing platform work and special infra-intense projects. I’m not saying this is the one true way or even a particularly good way, and I agree about the identity crisis (same as with DevOps half a decade ago).