Becoming SRE

Chapter 6. Getting to SRE from…       

In Chapter 5, I provided some ideas on the preparations one might need to become an SRE. If you haven’t read it, you may want to check it out before continuing with this one. One thing that chapter doesn’t do, however, is assert that everybody has to start in the same place on their way to SRE.¹ In this chapter, I’ll try to offer some tips for individuals who might want to enter SRE from some common jumping-off (or in) points. The word common is key here because I come from a “big tent” perspective—there isn’t a set of preordained predecessor roles required for entry into the field. In this chapter, I will be focusing on the entry routes I get asked about the most.

Are You Already an SRE?

I know this is perhaps a strange question to start the chapter with, but I have to ask it. In my experience, in almost every organization I meet, there are at least one or two people who go beyond “SRE-curious” and are actually operating from an SRE mindset in their job without any formal recognition or training. They are already actively working toward collaboratively improving the reliability of everything they touch. They are asking the right questions in meetings, initiating postincident reviews, building the right tools, and so on. Sometimes they are doing this in a fairly public fashion, but often they are working quietly in their own corner of the sky.

If this is you, congratulations, you may already be an SRE on the inside. Your challenge will be ...