4 ms·

Even within Google, this is not universal. I doubt the majority of SREs at Google have even read the "Google SRE book". On the other hand, the book has some nu

by nvarsj 2y ago

Even within Google, this is not universal. I doubt the majority of SREs at Google have even read the "Google SRE book". On the other hand, the book has some nuggets that make it worth reading. But it should be treated as a collection of essays from some very senior SREs rather than a manual.

elktown 2y ago
> On the other hand, the book has some nuggets that make it worth reading Definitely! Mostly just a word of caution to not get overeager hoping to apply this everywhere, because "here be dragons".
fl0ki 2y ago
> I doubt the majority of SREs at Google have even read the "Google SRE book". That's absolutely true, but by design. SRE already had exceptional horizontal knowledge transfer before any book. The book was published (specifically, published) to extend that knowledge transfer outside of Google's own walls so the rest of the industry could also benefit. I was a SWE-SRE for several years and absorbed a lot just through talks and postmortems. I left Google and joined another big org that was a ... bit ... less far along in its SRE ambitions. I couldn't convince a single person to read the book, even after linking to specific sections to explain why e.g. jitter is important to have in tandem with backoff. Nobody cares, they have boxes to tick and janky bullshit to ship. Most people are not interested in learning from books these days, inside or outside Google, but at least inside Google you can learn from an unbroken lineage of experienced SREs. If you're trying to build out an SRE org in your own company, you're better off hiring one ex-Google Senior SRE than you would be if you bought everyone a copy of the book and two weeks of formal training. Actually embedding real-world experience into your teams is the most effective form of knowledge transfer available.

4 ms·

Even within Google, this is not universal. I doubt the majority of SREs at Google have even read the "Google SRE book". On the other hand, the book has some nu

by nvarsj 2y ago

elktown 2y ago
> On the other hand, the book has some nuggets that make it worth reading Definitely! Mostly just a word of caution to not get overeager hoping to apply this everywhere, because "here be dragons".
fl0ki 2y ago
> I doubt the majority of SREs at Google have even read the "Google SRE book". That's absolutely true, but by design. SRE already had exceptional horizontal knowledge transfer before any book. The book was published (specifically, published) to extend that knowledge transfer outside of Google's own walls so the rest of the industry could also benefit. I was a SWE-SRE for several years and absorbed a lot just through talks and postmortems. I left Google and joined another big org that was a ... bit ... less far along in its SRE ambitions. I couldn't convince a single person to read the book, even after linking to specific sections to explain why e.g. jitter is important to have in tandem with backoff. Nobody cares, they have boxes to tick and janky bullshit to ship. Most people are not interested in learning from books these days, inside or outside Google, but at least inside Google you can learn from an unbroken lineage of experienced SREs. If you're trying to build out an SRE org in your own company, you're better off hiring one ex-Google Senior SRE than you would be if you bought everyone a copy of the book and two weeks of formal training. Actually embedding real-world experience into your teams is the most effective form of knowledge transfer available.