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The EVOLUTION of the ENGINEER – Site Reliability Engineers

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ALL CALL SREs REQUIRED! 

Let’s take a walk down to the ocean and while you consider the opportunity, benefits, and $$$, think about dipping your toe in. Let’s explore Reliability, Site Reliability, and the Site Reliability Engineer. 
No doubt the world is evolving. People are evolving and tech is evolving. Business and customer requirements are evolving. The evolution of systems requires the evolution of engineers. Nature and pandemics put undue stress on our resources! In comes the Certified Site Reliability Engineer. 

"Urgent, Urgent, Urgent… All hands on deck!", is a call that practitioners, managers, and organizations do not want to hear and recognize must stop!

Reliability – At a minimum, we recognize that the delivery of service is not dependent solely on the quality of the product itself and the goal is not that the products or service merely be deployed. A service must be operated and sustained over a period. How long? For the life of the service. Or in some cases, until you close the doors.
But, ask yourself:
  • Once identified, How long does it take for an incident to reach the right team?
  • Could it be minutes instead of hours or even days? Why then is it taking so long?
  • What is the percentage of repeat incidents against all incidents reported?
  • Can repeat incidents be reduced to NEVER AGAIN?
Site Reliability - Requires systems thinking. Systems and ecosystems generate outcomes to deliver value. The outcomes of those systems must be able to withstand storms or some type of failure and remain functional for the consumer/customer usability. Systems thinking and user experience are essential. Site Reliability puts the “ability” in “reliable”.

Site Reliability Engineers – Shift Left
  • Have a special skillset applied to the architecture, design, and development of products and services.
  • Spend 50% of time and skills in Systems Engineering – application design, data structures, key integrations, and development tasks.
and…
  • Spend 50% of their time contributing to the ongoing operation of systems in production and systems engineering problems.
SREs understand and contribute support for improved systems affecting infra, operating systems, networks, and databases both for today and for the future. They ensure availability, observability, efficiency, and reliability holistically.

Site Reliability Engineers embed themselves into cross-functional Agile and DevOps teams and continuously lean into the opportunity to … Educate and Inspire.



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