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Did the OP confirm Elon theory that most of the stuff is not needed? > For four of those years I was the sole SRE for the Cache team. There was a few before me
by csomar 4y ago
Did the OP confirm Elon theory that most of the stuff is not needed?
> For four of those years I was the sole SRE for the Cache team. There was a few before me, and the whole team I worked with, where a bunch came and went. But for four years I was the one responsible for automation, reliability and operations in the team. I designed and implemented most of the tools that are keeping it running so I think I’m qualified to talk about it. (There might be only one or two other people)
If you only need one person for the caching department (which is, as I understand, is critical as it delivers most of the data); then maybe you need a handful other dozen engineers and there you have a functional Twitter.
That or the OP is full of himself. Kinda like Musk?
- mapme 4y agoOne SRE, many SWE. Also have fun asking someone to be permanently oncall with one person on the team. The cache clusters size are also described here for anyone who wants a good technical read over speculation. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi20-yang.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi20-yang.pdf
- csomar 4y agoThe OP claims he did the implementation (so he was the software engineer too?): > I designed and implemented most of the tools that are keeping it running so I think I’m qualified to talk about it.
- cmckn 4y agoI read this as they built the “tools” (automation, orchestration, monitoring, etc.) for this system, not the system itself; which aligns with the common definition of SRE.
- mapme 4y agoSRE is a mix of both. The expectation is you are able to write and understand any code the team is responsible for.
- okdood64 4y agoSWEs can share the oncall rotation with SRE.
- mapme 4y agoYes that is the normal case. The post was refuting the assertion that one engineer can run these services indefinitely as previously the OP had the help of SWEs oncall and also fixing bugs.
- vba616 4y agoI can believe that a dozen talented engineers could in principle suffice for Twitter. But who believes those 12 engineers still work there? The author of this specific item is in fact not there any more. And a lot of other people are needed to bring in revenue, don't you think? Nobody is paying for a beautiful caching system. It's like if I doubled my weight in the last ten years. Half of me is bloat, and yet, there is no possibility bisection will improve my health.