Becoming SRE

Preface

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,

make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history

or music, that we should begin

with the simple exercises first

and slowly go on trying

the hard ones, practicing till strength

and accuracy became one with the daring

to leap into transcendence, take the chance

of breaking down the wild arpeggio

or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

—And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on

everything at once before we’ve even begun

to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin

in the midst of the hard movement,

the one already sounding as we are born.

Excerpt from “Transcendental Etude” by Adrienne Rich in The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950–1984 (Norton, 1984)

Where Are You Right Now?

Hello, Dear Reader. I start this book with that particular excerpt from Adrienne Rich’s poetry because it does a far better job than I could of acknowledging that you are coming to site reliability engineering (SRE) and this book with a particular and existing context already playing out. Perhaps you are in the midst of a reliability crisis at work, being asked to lead a team, in the midst of a career change, or entering a new career. I’m picturing you in the middle of the hard movement, and I promise to keep that in mind as we get started together with SRE.

You are currently reading a book primarily for people getting started with SRE in some capacity or another. You may have a ton of experience with adjacent operations ...