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<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head><meta charSet="utf-8" data-next-head=""/><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" data-next-head=""/><script async="" src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-ECJJ2Q2SJQ"></script><title data-next-head=""></title><link rel="preconnect" href="https://bridge.hackernoon.com" data-next-head=""/><link rel="preconnect" href="https://cdn.hackernoon.com" data-next-head=""/><link rel="preconnect" href="https://hackernoon.imgix.net" data-next-head=""/><link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://cdn.hackernoon.com" data-next-head=""/><meta name="description" content="&lt;span&gt;A&lt;/span&gt;bout 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called &lt;a href=&quot;https://hackbrightacademy.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hackbright Academy&lt;/a&gt; during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong." data-next-head=""/><meta property="og:title" content="So you want to be an SRE? | HackerNoon" data-next-head=""/><meta property="og:description" content="&lt;span&gt;A&lt;/span&gt;bout 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called &lt;a href=&quot;https://hackbrightacademy.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hackbright Academy&lt;/a&gt; during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong." data-next-head=""/><meta name="image" property="og:image" content="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*vhk8tkpKWTVz7GWcDWuocA.png" data-next-head=""/><meta property="twitter:title" content="So you want to be an SRE? | HackerNoon" data-next-head=""/><meta property="twitter:description" content="&lt;span&gt;A&lt;/span&gt;bout 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called &lt;a href=&quot;https://hackbrightacademy.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Hackbright Academy&lt;/a&gt; during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. 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I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong. Hackbright Academy Dropbox Office Library in San Francisco, 2017 At Hackbright, we spent four weeks working on one . One might imagine, with such a small scale project, I didn’t think a ton about reliability and scalability. singular project It was not until I began speaking to industry professionals, specifically several SREs, that I realized I had an interest in thinking about large scale systems and making them scalable and reliable. I now work as a (SRE) on the Monitoring Team at Dropbox and I absolutely love the work that I am doing. I get to work with my teammates to design large scale systems as well as the internal tools that monitor them! Site Reliability Engineer Since I started at Dropbox, I have had the opportunity to speak with many career changers like me and share what I have learned over the past few months. The question that I am constantly asked is: What is an SRE, and how do I become one? This post is designed for those who are interested in learning more about SRE. I give a general explanation about the position, offer key questions to ask yourself before committing to applying to SRE roles and point to several resources to jumpstart your journey. What is an SRE anyway? To understand the answer to this question, it’s important that you learn a bit of history. Lets talk about the traditional approach to system management. Prior to Google’s creation of the SRE position, ran company operations. System Administrators What is a system administrator? A system administrator or ‘sysadmin’ is someone who is responsible for the configuration, upkeep and reliability of complex computing systems. They assemble software components (that are written by developers) and deploy them to produce a service. They monitor these services and respond if there are any events that occur with the service. System Administrators worked on the “operations” side of things, whereas engineers worked on the “development” side of things. What’s so bad about this approach? According to the , this approach caused division and conflict between developers and sysadmins. Because the two had different backgrounds, skills, and incentives, it meant that they had different vocabulary and thought about reliability very differently. Developers wanted new features to get out to users as quickly as possible whereas the operations team members (sysadmins) wanted to avoid breaking anything. Google saw the concerns with this approach and created the idea of “Site Reliability Engineering.” SRE Book So again, WHAT IS AN SRE? According to the creator of the position at Google, Ben Treynor defines SRE in as: this interview “Fundamentally, it’s what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations function…So SRE is fundamentally doing work that has historically been done by an operations team, but using engineers with software expertise, and banking on the fact that these engineers are inherently both predisposed to, and have the ability to, substitute automation for human labor.” Example of a data center Let me offer a concrete example on how SRE makes the “new way” even better. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit a data center just like the one you see pictured here. I toured several large warehouse sized rooms filled with thousands of machines. The magnitude of this space is remarkable. Now let’s say that one of the servers in the data center went down and needed to be replaced. With the “old way,” a new server would be configured manually by a system administrator. What this means is that the sysadmin would make sure the new machine has the proper operating system, software, tags, etc. Now imagine that 1,000 servers need to be replaced. See where I am going with this? It would take forever, or the company would need a lot of sysadmins to do the labor. manually Now consider the “new way” as described in this bullet point that I took from Dropbox’s Site Reliability Engineer Job posting: “You will automate the server provisioning process to reduce the labor of our networking engineering and datacenter operations teams. Once we plug a new server in, it walks itself through all aspects of provisioning to join the fleet without any human involvement.” Without any human involvement. In this example, an SRE would be responsible that automates the server configuration process. Cool right? This example really helped me to understand what an SRE truly is: for writing the software Site Reliability Engineer = Software Engineer + Systems Enthusiast According to , SRE Manager at Dropbox, Tammy Butow “SREs are Software Engineers who specialize in reliability. SREs apply the principles of computer science and engineering to the design and development of computer systems: generally, large distributed ones.” By eliminating human interaction through automation, SREs make systems more reliable. So essentially, an SRE’s job is to automate themselves out of a job. But Krishelle, why do you think this is cool? The reason I found this to be really cool is the same reason I decided to study math. Math allows you to utilize functions and rules to compute large scale problems. One of my favorite lessons from when I was teaching is based on this problem: The Staircase Problem Visual Aid “You own a landscaping business and one of your specialties is outdoor brick staircase. How many bricks would you need to bring if a customer ordered a 10-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 20-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 38-high stairwell?” Gauss’ Trick for summing the numbers from 1 to n My students quickly realized that counting the bricks was an okay strategy for the smaller staircases. But as I increased the height all the way to a 100-high stairwell, they were forced to find another way. They realized that math can be used as a tool to calculate large scale problems, avoiding a brute force approach (In my Algebra 1 courses, I would get students to discover they could use the equation n(n+1)/2 for the staircase problem.) Just as math is a tool for solving large scale problems, in the world of computers, code is a tool for managing large scale systems. It is a tool that allows for automating tasks through software and eliminating the need for manual human labor. Site Reliability Engineers are behind this work, they manage and automate these systems using their systems knowledge and their code, making the system more reliable with every bit. How do I know if SRE is right for me? This is a big question that comes up when I speak to job seekers considering pursuing SRE roles. I put together some important questions to ask yourself before you commit completely. SRE Compatibility Quiz Do you like thinking about large scale problems that have a lot of moving parts? Do you like thinking about how to make large systems more reliable? Are you okay with working on software that will likely never be overtly seen by an external user? Do you enjoy looking at a terminal for large amounts of time? Do you enjoy the process of diagnosing and fixing a problem? If yes, what if the diagnosis involves system level problems that you cannot always see? Do you enjoy thinking about system information (e.g. disk space, cpu, os, kernel, etc.) and system level functionality (e.g. ssh, proc, cron, swaps, etc.)? Are you comfortable with the idea of being “on-call” in which you are likely to be in high-stakes scenario where something needs to be fixed? Are you able to stay calm under pressure? Do you approach problems in a logical, process-oriented way? Are you comfortable attempting a problem that has never been solved before? Are you someone who thinks about how you can make things better? If you answered yes to at least 8 of these questions, SRE could be a good position for you. Read on to find more resources on SRE and a list of companies that offer SRE roles. So I really want to be an SRE, now what? There are many resources out there that are useful to start learning more about SRE, as well as gain the skills needed to obtain a role. Here are a few that I recommend starting with. Understanding SRE Role and Responsibilities Still trying to wrap your mind around what SRE means? Check out these resources: 🌐 — A website that contains Google’s definition of SRE, the transcript of an interview with the creator of the position, as well as other resources (including the ). Google’s SRE Resources online version of the SRE Book 🌐 — Realizing you may not be ready to go out and spend $40-$50 on the SRE book, this is an awesome set of notes on each chapter of the book by . SRE Book Notes Dan Luu 🎥 — A talk given by the creator of the SRE role Ben Treynor of Google. Keys to SRE 🎥 — A Webinar with Google SREs. Site Reliability Engineers — Keeping Google up and running 24/7 🎥 — A talk given by Tammy Butow, SRE Manager at Dropbox. Site Reliability Engineering at Dropbox 🎥 — A talk by Jonah Horowitz, SRE at Netflix. Site Reliability Engineering at Netflix 🎥 — A panel of SREs at SRECon16. Who/What is SRE? 📰 — An interview with Andrew Fong, an SRE manager at Dropbox. Andrew Fong on Tackling the Full Stack 📰 — An article about SRE at Google. Site Reliability Engineers: “We Solve Cooler Problems” 📰 — An article about SRE at Atlassian. Love DevOps? Wait until you meet SRE Companies that Hire SREs Curious which companies out there hire SREs? Here are just a few: Dropbox Google Netflix GitHub Atlassian Stripe Pinterest (called Production Engineer) Facebook (called DevOps Software Engineer) Reddit …and many ! I have linked to sample job posts so that you can get a feel for what SRE means at the different companies. more Resources for an Aspiring SRE Once you feel you have a handle on the definition of SRE, check out these resources to start expanding your skill set. General Resources 📰 — A comprehensive resource list that and I put together for Bootcamp Grads interested in SRE roles. Graduating from Bootcamp and interested in becoming a Site Reliability Engineer? Tammy Butow 📰 — A list of skills and mindsets of an SRE. The Must Know Checklist For DevOps &amp; Site Reliability Engineers 🌐 — A Google Code University Course. Introduction to Distributed System Design 🌐 — An amazing curated list of SRE and Production Engineering resources by Pavlos Ratis. Definitely bookmark worthy if you become an SRE. Awesome Site Reliability Engineering Linux Resources Since I did not have a lot of Linux experience when I started my Junior-level SRE role, I have included a separate section for the tutorials and tools that I have found useful for learning Linux fundamentals. 🎥 — A series of awesome videos that breaks down key Linux concepts. Eli the Computer Guy’s Linux Video Series 🌐 — A step by step tutorial Unix/Linux Tutorial for Beginners 🌐 — A step by step tutorial. LinuxCommand.org 📋 Cheatography Linux Cheatsheet 📋 FossWire Linux Cheatsheet Twitter Accounts and Blogs to Follow Julia Evans on and Twitter Blog Brandan Gregg Eli Bendersky Several Nines Philip Fisher-Ogden Tammy Butow Nora Jones — Pavlos offers too! Pavlos Ratis follow recommendations SRE Weekly SREcon Dropbox Infrastructure Resources Dropbox’s Magic Pocket In addition to the Dropbox specific resources covered in , here are some others that made me super interested in working as an SRE at Dropbox: Tammy’s blog post 🎥 Magic Pocket 📰 Scaling to exabytes and beyond 📰 Inside the Magic Pocket 🌐 Dropbox Infrastructure Blog Found this post useful? Kindly tap the ❤ button below and share with friends considering SRE roles! About the author Krishelle is a former High School Math and Spanish Teacher turned Site Reliability Engineer at . about her journey from education to tech and connect with her on and . Dropbox Read Twitter LinkedIn Looking to make a Career Change but not sure where to start? Job Searching and not sure how to get organized? Check out these articles by Krishelle: Designing your Career Change ) How I Transitioned From Teaching to Engineering (Webinar Tools for Organizing Your Job Search"}</script><link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=IBM+Plex+Mono:wght@400;700&amp;family=IBM+Plex+Sans:wght@400;700&amp;family=Inter:wght@400;600;900&amp;family=Source+Code+Pro:wght@400;500;600;700&amp;display=swap" rel="stylesheet" media="print"/><noscript><link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=IBM+Plex+Mono:wght@400;700&amp;family=IBM+Plex+Sans:wght@400;700&amp;family=Inter:wght@400;600;900&amp;family=Source+Code+Pro:wght@400;500;600;700&amp;display=swap" rel="stylesheet"/></noscript> <!-- --><script id="ga4-init">
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justify-start"><i class="hn hn-star-solid"></i> <!-- -->64,984<!-- --> <!-- -->reads</span></div><h1 class="font-bold line-clamp-4 leading-snug text-lightTextStrong
tracking-wider text-2xl sm:text-3xl xl:text-4xl
">So you want to be an SRE?</h1><div class="flex flex-wrap border-y border-lightBorder my-4 sm:my-2 sm:border-t-0 py-2 items-center justify-between text-lightTextLight text-sm sm:text-base xl:text-xl "><div class="flex flex-wrap justify-between w-full xs:w-auto items-center gap-2"><span class="flex items-center flex-wrap gap-2 mr-10 sm:mr-0 ">by<div class="dropdown dropdown-hover "><label tabindex="0"><a aria-label="View profile of Krishelle Hardson-Hurley" href="/u/khardsonhurley"><strong class="...">Krishelle Hardson-Hurley</strong></a></label><div class="dropdown-content z-[1] pt-2 sm:pt-1 left-[-40px] w-[280px] xs:w-[320px] sm:w-[400px] bg-transparent menu rounded "><div class="w-full "><div class=" p-4 border border-lightBorder bg-light rounded-lg"><a href="/u/khardsonhurley" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="flex items-start text-sm rounded-lg group gap-2"><div class=""><img alt="Krishelle Hardson-Hurley" loading="lazy" width="40" height="40" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" class="w-10 h-9 border-solid border border-lightBorder rounded-full object-contain" style="color:transparent" srcSet="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/avatars/robot-b6.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=48 1x, https://hackernoon.imgix.net/avatars/robot-b6.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=96 2x" src="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/avatars/robot-b6.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=96"/></div><span class="flex flex-col min-w-0 w-full justify-center"><span class="flex items-center gap-1 text-ellipsis overflow-hidden whitespace-nowrap"><span class="font-bold group-hover:underline text-xs truncate"><span class="text-xs font-light mr-1">by</span>Krishelle Hardson-Hurley</span><span class="text-xs font-light opacity-50">|</span><span class="text-sm false text-ellipsis overflow-hidden whitespace-nowrap" title="@khardsonhurley">@<!-- -->khardsonhurley</span></span></span></a><p class="text-sm overflow-x-auto mt-2 text-bodyTxtLight">Site Reliability Engineer</p><div class="mt-4"><div class="w-full flex justify-start"><div class="w-full"><form class="w-full flex flex-col items-start gap-2 "><div class="flex w-full"><input class="p-2 flex-grow border rounded-l-md text-lightText bg-light focus:outline-none focus:ring-0 focus:ring-transparent border-lightBorder w-full text-base px-2}
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}" placeholder="name@company.com" type="email" required="" name="email" value=""/><button type="submit" class="text-base}
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<div><div class="w-full my-4"><div class="flex items-center justify-center w-full h-full"><div class="relative group cursor-zoom-in transition-transform hover:scale-[1.01] max-w-full mx-auto flex flex-col items-center"><button class="absolute top-2 right-5 z-10 w-6 h-6 rounded flex items-center justify-center opacity-0 group-hover:opacity-100 transition-opacity"><i class="hn hn-download text-darkText bg-dark p-2 rounded-xl text-base"></i></button><img alt="Krishelle Hardson-Hurley&#x27;s image-ac16b8" fetchPriority="low" loading="lazy" width="1200" height="800" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" class="w-full h-auto object-contain rounded-lg shadow-lg my-0" style="color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns=&#x27;http://www.w3.org/2000/svg&#x27; viewBox=&#x27;0 0 1200 800&#x27;%3E%3Cfilter id=&#x27;b&#x27; color-interpolation-filters=&#x27;sRGB&#x27;%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values=&#x27;1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1&#x27; result=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeFlood x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite operator=&#x27;out&#x27; in=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite in2=&#x27;SourceGraphic&#x27;/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27; x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; preserveAspectRatio=&#x27;none&#x27; style=&#x27;filter: url(%23b);&#x27; href=&#x27;data:image/svg+xml;base64,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&#x27;/%3E%3C/svg%3E&quot;)" srcSet="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*nZ4wRil67BpMxiqnPAlaBw.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=1200 1x, https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*nZ4wRil67BpMxiqnPAlaBw.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=3840 2x" src="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*nZ4wRil67BpMxiqnPAlaBw.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=3840"/></div></div></div></div>
<p>Dropbox Office Library in San Francisco, 2017</p>
<p>At Hackbright, we spent four weeks working on one <a href="https://github.com/khardsonhurley/Hackbright-Project?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">singular project</a>. One might imagine, with such a small scale project, I didn’t think a ton about reliability and scalability.</p>
<p>It was not until I began speaking to industry professionals, specifically several SREs, that I realized I had an interest in thinking about large scale systems and making them scalable and reliable.</p>
<p>I now work as a <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/237271?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Site Reliability Engineer</a> (SRE) on the Monitoring Team at Dropbox and I absolutely love the work that I am doing. I get to work with my teammates to design large scale systems as well as the internal tools that monitor them!</p>
<p>Since I started at Dropbox, I have had the opportunity to speak with many career changers like me and share what I have learned over the past few months. The question that I am constantly asked is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What is an SRE, and how do I become one?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This post is designed for those who are interested in learning more about SRE. I give a general explanation about the position, offer key questions to ask yourself before committing to applying to SRE roles and point to several resources to jumpstart your journey.</p>
<h3><strong>What is an SRE anyway?</strong></h3>
<p>To understand the answer to this question, it’s important that you learn a bit of history. Lets talk about the traditional approach to system management. Prior to Google’s creation of the SRE position, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">System Administrators</a> ran company operations.</p>
<h4><em>What is a system administrator?</em></h4>
<ul>
<li>A system administrator or ‘sysadmin’ is someone who is responsible for the configuration, upkeep and reliability of complex computing systems.</li>
<li>They assemble software components (that are written by developers) and deploy them to produce a service.</li>
<li>They monitor these services and respond if there are any events that occur with the service.</li>
</ul>
<p>System Administrators worked on the “operations” side of things, whereas engineers worked on the “development” side of things.</p>
<h4><em>What’s so bad about this approach?</em></h4>
<p>According to the <a href="http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920041528.do?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">SRE Book</a>, this approach caused division and conflict between developers and sysadmins. Because the two had different backgrounds, skills, and incentives, it meant that they had different vocabulary and thought about reliability very differently. Developers wanted new features to get out to users as quickly as possible whereas the operations team members (sysadmins) wanted to avoid breaking anything. Google saw the concerns with this approach and created the idea of “Site Reliability Engineering.”</p>
<h4><em>So again, WHAT IS AN SRE?</em></h4>
<p>According to the creator of the position at Google, Ben Treynor defines SRE in <a href="https://landing.google.com/sre/interview/ben-treynor.html?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">this interview</a> as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Fundamentally, it’s what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations function…So SRE is fundamentally doing work that has historically been done by an operations team, but using engineers with software expertise, and banking on the fact that these engineers are inherently both predisposed to, and have the ability to, substitute automation for human labor.”</p>
</blockquote>
<div><div class="w-full my-4"><div class="flex items-center justify-center w-full h-full"><div class="relative group cursor-zoom-in transition-transform hover:scale-[1.01] max-w-full mx-auto flex flex-col items-center"><button class="absolute top-2 right-5 z-10 w-6 h-6 rounded flex items-center justify-center opacity-0 group-hover:opacity-100 transition-opacity"><i class="hn hn-download text-darkText bg-dark p-2 rounded-xl text-base"></i></button><img alt="Krishelle Hardson-Hurley&#x27;s image-351c88" fetchPriority="low" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" class="w-full h-auto object-contain rounded-lg shadow-lg my-0" style="color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns=&#x27;http://www.w3.org/2000/svg&#x27; viewBox=&#x27;0 0 1000 667&#x27;%3E%3Cfilter id=&#x27;b&#x27; color-interpolation-filters=&#x27;sRGB&#x27;%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values=&#x27;1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1&#x27; result=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeFlood x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite operator=&#x27;out&#x27; in=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite in2=&#x27;SourceGraphic&#x27;/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27; x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; preserveAspectRatio=&#x27;none&#x27; style=&#x27;filter: url(%23b);&#x27; href=&#x27;data:image/svg+xml;base64,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&#x27;/%3E%3C/svg%3E&quot;)" srcSet="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*81rZO8X9h0GibRI6gRDe2Q.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=1080 1x, https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*81rZO8X9h0GibRI6gRDe2Q.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=2048 2x" src="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*81rZO8X9h0GibRI6gRDe2Q.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=2048"/></div></div></div></div>
<p>Example of a data center</p>
<p>Let me offer a concrete example on how SRE makes the “new way” even better.</p>
<p>A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit a data center just like the one you see pictured here. I toured several large warehouse sized rooms filled with thousands of machines. The magnitude of this space is remarkable.</p>
<p>Now let’s say that one of the servers in the data center went down and needed to be replaced. With the “old way,” a new server would be configured manually by a system administrator. What this means is that the sysadmin would <em>manually</em> make sure the new machine has the proper operating system, software, tags, etc. Now imagine that 1,000 servers need to be replaced. See where I am going with this? It would take forever, or the company would need a lot of sysadmins to do the labor.</p>
<p>Now consider the “new way” as described in this bullet point that I took from Dropbox’s Site Reliability Engineer Job posting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You will automate the server provisioning process to reduce the labor of our networking engineering and datacenter operations teams. Once we plug a new server in, it walks itself through all aspects of provisioning to join the fleet without any human involvement.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Without any human involvement.</strong></p>
<p>In this example, an SRE would be responsible <em>for writing the software</em> that automates the server configuration process. Cool right? This example really helped me to understand what an SRE truly is:</p>
<p><strong>Site Reliability Engineer = Software Engineer + Systems Enthusiast</strong></p>
<p>According to <a href="https://twitter.com/tammybutow?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Tammy Butow</a>, SRE Manager at Dropbox,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“SREs are Software Engineers who specialize in reliability. SREs apply the principles of computer science and engineering to the design and development of computer systems: generally, large distributed ones.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By eliminating human interaction through automation, SREs make systems more reliable. So essentially, an SRE’s job is to automate themselves out of a job.</p>
<h4><strong>But Krishelle, why do you think this is cool?</strong></h4>
<p>The reason I found this to be really cool is the same reason I decided to study math. Math allows you to utilize functions and rules to compute large scale problems. One of my favorite lessons from when I was teaching is based on this problem:</p>
<div><div class="w-full my-4"><div class="flex items-center justify-center w-full h-full"><div class="relative group cursor-zoom-in transition-transform hover:scale-[1.01] max-w-full mx-auto flex flex-col items-center"><button class="absolute top-2 right-5 z-10 w-6 h-6 rounded flex items-center justify-center opacity-0 group-hover:opacity-100 transition-opacity"><i class="hn hn-download text-darkText bg-dark p-2 rounded-xl text-base"></i></button><img alt="Krishelle Hardson-Hurley&#x27;s image-05721" fetchPriority="low" loading="lazy" width="288" height="288" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" class="w-full h-auto object-contain rounded-lg shadow-lg my-0" style="color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns=&#x27;http://www.w3.org/2000/svg&#x27; viewBox=&#x27;0 0 288 288&#x27;%3E%3Cfilter id=&#x27;b&#x27; color-interpolation-filters=&#x27;sRGB&#x27;%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values=&#x27;1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1&#x27; result=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeFlood x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite operator=&#x27;out&#x27; in=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite in2=&#x27;SourceGraphic&#x27;/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27; x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; preserveAspectRatio=&#x27;none&#x27; style=&#x27;filter: url(%23b);&#x27; href=&#x27;data:image/svg+xml;base64,CiAgICA8c3ZnIHdpZHRoPSIyODgiIGhlaWdodD0iMjg4IiB2ZXJzaW9uPSIxLjEiIHhtbG5zPSJodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8yMDAwL3N2ZyIgeG1sbnM6eGxpbms9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cudzMub3JnLzE5OTkveGxpbmsiPgogICAgICA8ZGVmcz4KICAgICAgICA8bGluZWFyR3JhZGllbnQgaWQ9ImciPgogICAgICAgICAgPHN0b3Agc3RvcC1jb2xvcj0iIzIyMiIgb2Zmc2V0PSIyMCUiIC8+CiAgICAgICAgICA8c3RvcCBzdG9wLWNvbG9yPSIjMGYwIiBvZmZzZXQ9IjUwJSIgLz4KICAgICAgICAgIDxzdG9wIHN0b3AtY29sb3I9IiMyMjIiIG9mZnNldD0iODAlIiAvPgogICAgICAgIDwvbGluZWFyR3JhZGllbnQ+CiAgICAgIDwvZGVmcz4KICAgICAgPHJlY3Qgd2lkdGg9IjI4OCIgaGVpZ2h0PSIyODgiIGZpbGw9IiMyMjIiIC8+CiAgICAgIDxyZWN0IGlkPSJyIiB3aWR0aD0iMjg4IiBoZWlnaHQ9IjI4OCIgZmlsbD0idXJsKCNnKSIgLz4KICAgICAgPGFuaW1hdGUgeGxpbms6aHJlZj0iI3IiIGF0dHJpYnV0ZU5hbWU9IngiIGZyb209Ii0yODgiIHRvPSIyODgiIGR1cj0iMXMiIHJlcGVhdENvdW50PSJpbmRlZmluaXRlIiAgLz4KICAgIDwvc3ZnPg==&#x27;/%3E%3C/svg%3E&quot;)" srcSet="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*2BQJ7JLccELHtK7pF4pr-g.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=384 1x, https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*2BQJ7JLccELHtK7pF4pr-g.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=640 2x" src="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*2BQJ7JLccELHtK7pF4pr-g.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=640"/></div></div></div></div>
<p>The Staircase Problem Visual Aid</p>
<p><em>“You own a landscaping business and one of your specialties is outdoor brick staircase. How many bricks would you need to bring if a customer ordered a 10-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 20-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 38-high stairwell?”</em></p>
<div><div class="w-full my-4"><div class="flex items-center justify-center w-full h-full"><div class="relative group cursor-zoom-in transition-transform hover:scale-[1.01] max-w-full mx-auto flex flex-col items-center"><button class="absolute top-2 right-5 z-10 w-6 h-6 rounded flex items-center justify-center opacity-0 group-hover:opacity-100 transition-opacity"><i class="hn hn-download text-darkText bg-dark p-2 rounded-xl text-base"></i></button><img alt="Krishelle Hardson-Hurley&#x27;s image-a8342" fetchPriority="low" loading="lazy" width="385" height="127" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" class="w-full h-auto object-contain rounded-lg shadow-lg my-0" style="color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns=&#x27;http://www.w3.org/2000/svg&#x27; viewBox=&#x27;0 0 385 127&#x27;%3E%3Cfilter id=&#x27;b&#x27; color-interpolation-filters=&#x27;sRGB&#x27;%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values=&#x27;1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1&#x27; result=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeFlood x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite operator=&#x27;out&#x27; in=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite in2=&#x27;SourceGraphic&#x27;/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27; x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; preserveAspectRatio=&#x27;none&#x27; style=&#x27;filter: url(%23b);&#x27; href=&#x27;data:image/svg+xml;base64,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&#x27;/%3E%3C/svg%3E&quot;)" srcSet="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*oZNQTHC3jLlDRwqvVgIjXA.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=640 1x, https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*oZNQTHC3jLlDRwqvVgIjXA.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=828 2x" src="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*oZNQTHC3jLlDRwqvVgIjXA.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=828"/></div></div></div></div>
<p>Gauss’ Trick for summing the numbers from 1 to n</p>
<p>My students quickly realized that counting the bricks was an okay strategy for the smaller staircases. But as I increased the height all the way to a 100-high stairwell, they were forced to find another way. They realized that math can be used as a tool to calculate large scale problems, avoiding a brute force approach (In my Algebra 1 courses, I would get students to discover they could use the equation n(n+1)/2 for the staircase problem.)</p>
<p>Just as math is a tool for solving large scale problems, in the world of computers, code is a tool for managing large scale systems. It is a tool that allows for automating tasks through software and eliminating the need for manual human labor. Site Reliability Engineers are behind this work, they manage and automate these systems using their systems knowledge and their code, making the system more reliable with every bit.</p>
<h3>How do I know if SRE is right for me?</h3>
<p>This is a big question that comes up when I speak to job seekers considering pursuing SRE roles. I put together some important questions to ask yourself before you commit completely.</p>
<h4><strong>SRE Compatibility Quiz</strong></h4>
<ol>
<li>Do you like thinking about large scale problems that have a lot of moving parts?</li>
<li>Do you like thinking about how to make large systems more reliable?</li>
<li>Are you okay with working on software that will likely never be overtly seen by an external user?</li>
<li>Do you enjoy looking at a terminal for large amounts of time?</li>
<li>Do you enjoy the process of diagnosing and fixing a problem? If yes, what if the diagnosis involves system level problems that you cannot always see?</li>
<li>Do you enjoy thinking about system information (e.g. disk space, cpu, os, kernel, etc.) and system level functionality (e.g. ssh, proc, cron, swaps, etc.)?</li>
<li>Are you comfortable with the idea of being “on-call” in which you are likely to be in high-stakes scenario where something needs to be fixed?</li>
<li>Are you able to stay calm under pressure?</li>
<li>Do you approach problems in a logical, process-oriented way?</li>
<li>Are you comfortable attempting a problem that has never been solved before?</li>
<li>Are you someone who thinks about how you can make things better?</li>
</ol>
<p>If you answered yes to at least 8 of these questions, SRE could be a good position for you. Read on to find more resources on SRE and a list of companies that offer SRE roles.</p>
<h3>So I really want to be an SRE, now what?</h3>
<p>There are many resources out there that are useful to start learning more about SRE, as well as gain the skills needed to obtain a role. Here are a few that I recommend starting with.</p>
<h4>Understanding SRE Role and Responsibilities</h4>
<p>Still trying to wrap your mind around what SRE means? Check out these resources:</p>
<p>🌐 <a href="https://landing.google.com/sre/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Google’s SRE Resources</a> — A website that contains Google’s definition of SRE, the transcript of an interview with the creator of the position, as well as other resources (including the <a href="https://landing.google.com/sre/book/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">online version of the SRE Book</a>).</p>
<p>🌐 <a href="http://danluu.com/google-sre-book/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">SRE Book Notes</a> — Realizing you may not be ready to go out and spend $40-$50 on the SRE book, this is an awesome set of notes on each chapter of the book by <a href="https://twitter.com/danluu?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Dan Luu</a>.</p>
<p>🎥 <a href="https://youtu.be/n4Wf14e2jxQ?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Keys to SRE</a> — A talk given by the creator of the SRE role Ben Treynor of Google.</p>
<p>🎥 <a href="https://youtu.be/yXI7r0_J29M?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Site Reliability Engineers — Keeping Google up and running 24/7</a> — A Webinar with Google SREs.</p>
<p>🎥 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggizCjUCCqE&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Site Reliability Engineering at Dropbox</a> — A talk given by Tammy Butow, SRE Manager at Dropbox.</p>
<p>🎥 <a href="https://youtu.be/koGaH4ffXaU?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Site Reliability Engineering at Netflix</a> — A talk by Jonah Horowitz, SRE at Netflix.</p>
<p>🎥 <a href="https://youtu.be/P83XESU3oZ8?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Who/What is SRE?</a> — A panel of SREs at SRECon16.</p>
<p>📰 <a href="https://medium.com/dropbox-makers/andrew-fong-on-tackling-the-full-stack-4bb2aa07e783?ref=hackernoon.com#.e91gzb9ys" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Andrew Fong on Tackling the Full Stack</a> — An interview with Andrew Fong, an SRE manager at Dropbox.</p>
<p>📰 <a href="https://careers.google.com/stories/site-reliability-engineering-profile-google/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Site Reliability Engineers: “We Solve Cooler Problems”</a> — An article about SRE at Google.</p>
<p>📰 <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/it-unplugged/devops/site-reliability-engineering-sre?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Love DevOps? Wait until you meet SRE</a> — An article about SRE at Atlassian.</p>
<h4>Companies that Hire SREs</h4>
<p>Curious which companies out there hire SREs? Here are just a few:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/237271?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Dropbox</a></li>
<li><a href="https://careers.google.com/jobs?ref=hackernoon.com#!t=jo&amp;jid=/google/software-engineer-site-reliability-1600-amphitheatre-pkwy-mountain-view-ca-2500016&amp;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Google</a></li>
<li><a href="https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/861152?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Netflix</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/about/careers?ref=hackernoon.com#positions" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">GitHub</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Atlassian/110170651?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Atlassian</a></li>
<li><a href="https://stripe.com/jobs/positions/site-reliability-engineer?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Stripe</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon17americas/program/presentation/evans?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Pinterest</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/a0I1200000Iglf8EAB/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Facebook</a> (called Production Engineer)</li>
<li><a href="https://boards.greenhouse.io/reddit/jobs/251080?ref=hackernoon.com#.WOxdrDxHaEc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Reddit</a> (called DevOps Software Engineer)</li>
</ul>
<p>…and many <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?keywords=Site%20Reliability%20Engineer&amp;locationId=us%3A0&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">more</a>! I have linked to sample job posts so that you can get a feel for what SRE means at the different companies.</p>
<h4>Resources for an Aspiring SRE</h4>
<p>Once you feel you have a handle on the definition of SRE, check out these resources to start expanding your skill set.</p>
<p><strong><em>General Resources</em></strong></p>
<p>📰 <a href="https://medium.com/@tammybutow/graduating-from-bootcamp-and-interested-in-becoming-a-site-reliability-engineer-b69a38ce858b?ref=hackernoon.com#.bpxamstwa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Graduating from Bootcamp and interested in becoming a Site Reliability Engineer?</a> — A comprehensive resource list that <a href="https://twitter.com/tammybutow?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Tammy Butow</a> and I put together for Bootcamp Grads interested in SRE roles.</p>
<p>📰 <a href="https://hackernoon.com/the-must-know-checklist-for-devops-system-reliability-engineers-f74c1cbf259d?ref=hackernoon.com#.9t38pcyiq" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">The Must Know Checklist For DevOps &amp; Site Reliability Engineers</a> — A list of skills and mindsets of an SRE.</p>
<p>🌐 <a href="http://www.hpcs.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/~tatebe/lecture/h23/dsys/dsd-tutorial.html?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Introduction to Distributed System Design</a> — A Google Code University Course.</p>
<p>🌐 <a href="https://github.com/dastergon/awesome-sre?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Awesome Site Reliability Engineering</a> — An amazing curated list of SRE and Production Engineering resources by Pavlos Ratis. Definitely bookmark worthy if you become an SRE.</p>
<p><strong><em>Linux Resources</em></strong></p>
<p>Since I did not have a lot of Linux experience when I started my Junior-level SRE role, I have included a separate section for the tutorials and tools that I have found useful for learning Linux fundamentals.</p>
<p>🎥 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gCwCOhMcog&amp;list=PLD6B6473ACF32C59D&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Eli the Computer Guy’s Linux Video Series</a> — A series of awesome videos that breaks down key Linux concepts.</p>
<p>🌐 <a href="http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Unix/Linux Tutorial for Beginners</a> — A step by step tutorial</p>
<p>🌐 <a href="http://linuxcommand.org/index.php?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">LinuxCommand.org</a> — A step by step tutorial.</p>
<p>📋 <a href="https://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/linux-command-line/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Cheatography Linux Cheatsheet</a></p>
<p>📋 <a href="https://files.fosswire.com/2007/08/fwunixref.pdf?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">FossWire Linux Cheatsheet</a></p>
<h4>Twitter Accounts and Blogs to Follow</h4>
<ul>
<li>Julia Evans on <a href="https://twitter.com/b0rk?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://jvns.ca/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/brendangregg?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Brandan Gregg</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/elibendersky?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Eli Bendersky</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/severalnines?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Several Nines</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/philip_pfo?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Philip Fisher-Ogden</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/tammybutow?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Tammy Butow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/nora_js?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Nora Jones</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/dastergon?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Pavlos Ratis</a> — Pavlos offers <a href="https://github.com/dastergon/awesome-sre?ref=hackernoon.com#blogs" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">follow recommendations</a> too!</li>
<li><a href="https://sreweekly.com/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">SRE Weekly</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/SREcon?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">SREcon</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Dropbox Infrastructure Resources</h4>
<div><div class="w-full my-4"><div class="flex items-center justify-center w-full h-full"><div class="relative group cursor-zoom-in transition-transform hover:scale-[1.01] max-w-full mx-auto flex flex-col items-center"><button class="absolute top-2 right-5 z-10 w-6 h-6 rounded flex items-center justify-center opacity-0 group-hover:opacity-100 transition-opacity"><i class="hn hn-download text-darkText bg-dark p-2 rounded-xl text-base"></i></button><img alt="Krishelle Hardson-Hurley&#x27;s image-829d88" fetchPriority="low" loading="lazy" width="1300" height="760" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" class="w-full h-auto object-contain rounded-lg shadow-lg my-0" style="color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns=&#x27;http://www.w3.org/2000/svg&#x27; viewBox=&#x27;0 0 1300 760&#x27;%3E%3Cfilter id=&#x27;b&#x27; color-interpolation-filters=&#x27;sRGB&#x27;%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values=&#x27;1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1&#x27; result=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeFlood x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite operator=&#x27;out&#x27; in=&#x27;s&#x27;/%3E%3CfeComposite in2=&#x27;SourceGraphic&#x27;/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation=&#x27;20&#x27;/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width=&#x27;100%25&#x27; height=&#x27;100%25&#x27; x=&#x27;0&#x27; y=&#x27;0&#x27; preserveAspectRatio=&#x27;none&#x27; style=&#x27;filter: url(%23b);&#x27; href=&#x27;data:image/svg+xml;base64,CiAgICA8c3ZnIHdpZHRoPSIxMzAwIiBoZWlnaHQ9Ijc2MCIgdmVyc2lvbj0iMS4xIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHhtbG5zOnhsaW5rPSJodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8xOTk5L3hsaW5rIj4KICAgICAgPGRlZnM+CiAgICAgICAgPGxpbmVhckdyYWRpZW50IGlkPSJnIj4KICAgICAgICAgIDxzdG9wIHN0b3AtY29sb3I9IiMyMjIiIG9mZnNldD0iMjAlIiAvPgogICAgICAgICAgPHN0b3Agc3RvcC1jb2xvcj0iIzBmMCIgb2Zmc2V0PSI1MCUiIC8+CiAgICAgICAgICA8c3RvcCBzdG9wLWNvbG9yPSIjMjIyIiBvZmZzZXQ9IjgwJSIgLz4KICAgICAgICA8L2xpbmVhckdyYWRpZW50PgogICAgICA8L2RlZnM+CiAgICAgIDxyZWN0IHdpZHRoPSIxMzAwIiBoZWlnaHQ9Ijc2MCIgZmlsbD0iIzIyMiIgLz4KICAgICAgPHJlY3QgaWQ9InIiIHdpZHRoPSIxMzAwIiBoZWlnaHQ9Ijc2MCIgZmlsbD0idXJsKCNnKSIgLz4KICAgICAgPGFuaW1hdGUgeGxpbms6aHJlZj0iI3IiIGF0dHJpYnV0ZU5hbWU9IngiIGZyb209Ii0xMzAwIiB0bz0iMTMwMCIgZHVyPSIxcyIgcmVwZWF0Q291bnQ9ImluZGVmaW5pdGUiICAvPgogICAgPC9zdmc+&#x27;/%3E%3C/svg%3E&quot;)" srcSet="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*Vi_8nE67cXzNb2CdhHxAAw.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=1920 1x, https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*Vi_8nE67cXzNb2CdhHxAAw.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=3840 2x" src="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*Vi_8nE67cXzNb2CdhHxAAw.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&amp;w=3840"/></div></div></div></div>
<p>Dropbox’s Magic Pocket</p>
<p>In addition to the Dropbox specific resources covered in <a href="https://medium.com/@tammybutow/graduating-from-bootcamp-and-interested-in-becoming-a-site-reliability-engineer-b69a38ce858b?ref=hackernoon.com#.gfaz5j9lr" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Tammy’s blog post</a>, here are some others that made me super interested in working as an SRE at Dropbox:</p>
<p>🎥 <a href="https://youtu.be/QULM7M98TLo?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Magic Pocket</a></p>
<p>📰 <a href="https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/03/magic-pocket-infrastructure/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Scaling to exabytes and beyond</a></p>
<p>📰 <a href="https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/inside-the-magic-pocket/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Inside the Magic Pocket</a></p>
<p>🌐 <a href="https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/category/infrastructure/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Dropbox Infrastructure Blog</a></p>
<h4><strong>Found this post useful? Kindly tap the ❤ button below and share with friends considering SRE roles!</strong></h4>
<h4>About the author</h4>
<p>Krishelle is a former High School Math and Spanish Teacher turned Site Reliability Engineer at <a href="http://www.dropbox.com/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Dropbox</a>. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5824e18ce4b094483eef3690?timestamp=1478812083540&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Read</a> about her journey from education to tech and connect with her on <a href="https://twitter.com/khardsonhurley?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/khardsonhurley?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">LinkedIn</a>.</p>
<p>Looking to make a Career Change but not sure where to start? Job Searching and not sure how to get organized? Check out these articles by Krishelle:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://hackbrightacademy.com/blog/3-key-elements-designing-career-change/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Designing your Career Change</a></li>
<li><a href="https://medium.com/@khardsonhurley/4-ways-i-celebrated-womens-history-month-this-year-dec06997d78f?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">How I Transitioned From Teaching to Engineering (Webinar</a>)</li>
<li><a href="https://hackernoon.com/8-tools-for-organizing-your-job-search-post-bootcamp-abe9b2d54c12?ref=hackernoon.com#.7iz84p4n1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Tools for Organizing Your Job Search</a></li>
</ul></div></div></div></div></div><div class="hidden xl:flex xl:flex-col self-stretch"><div class="sticky top-[99px] px-3"><div class=" flex flex-col flex-row-reverse items-start gap-4 "><span class="tooltip tooltip-left cursor-pointer" data-tip="Bookmark"><button class="3xl:hover:bg-lightAlt hover:bg-light p-1 md:p-2 rounded h-[40px] w-[40px] flex items-center justify-center border border-lightBorder"><i class="hn hn-bookmark text-lightText text-2xl"></i></button></span><span class="tooltip tooltip-left cursor-pointer" data-tip="Comment"><button class="3xl:hover:bg-lightAlt hover:bg-light p-1 md:p-2 rounded h-[40px] w-[40px] flex items-center justify-center border border-lightBorder"><i class="hn hn-comment text-lightText text-2xl"></i></button></span><div class="dropdown dropdown-bottom dropdown-hover group "><label tabindex="0" class="flex items-center cursor-pointer justify-center border border-lightBorder 3xl:group-hover:bg-lightAlt group-hover:bg-light h-[40px] w-[40px] p-2 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"><div id="commentSection" class=" font-sans max-w-[1000px] mt-4 mb-10 px-4 sm:px-0 items-center rounded-xl w-full flex flex-col"><div class="flex w-full flex-col xs:flex-row items-stretch justify-between gap-5 "><a href="/8-tools-for-organizing-your-job-search-post-bootcamp-abe9b2d54c12" rel="external" class="flex xs:w-1/2 flex-col group justify-between no-underline border border-lightBorder rounded-[5px] transition-all duration-300 hover:scale-[1.03]"><div class="flex-grow p-3 text-lightText"><span class="font-bold hover:text-lightTextStrong">← Previous</span><p class="mt-2 font-light hover:underline">8 Tools for Organizing your Post-Bootcamp Job Search</p></div></a><a href="/sreies-part-1-configuration-management-9cfdb4e9e303" rel="external" class="flex w-full xs:w-1/2 flex-col group justify-between no-underline border border-lightBorder rounded-[5px] transition-all duration-300 hover:scale-[1.03]"><div class="flex-grow p-3 "><span class="font-bold hover:text-lightTextStrong">Up Next →</span><p class="mt-2 font-light hover:underline ">SREies Part 1: Configuration Management</p></div></a></div></div></div><div id="aboutCard" class=" max-w-[1000px] mx-auto flex flex-col items-center gap-6 "><div class="w-full lg:border border-lightBorder rounded-2xl"><div class=" w-full px-4 py-3 sm:px-8 sm:py-6 "><h3 class="text-xl xs:text-2xl sm:text-3xl font-bold mb-6">About Author</h3><div class="flex flex-col items-start"><div class="flex gap-4 flex-row items-start w-full"><div class="relative shadow-md rounded-full flex-shrink-0 min-w-[50px] w-[50px] h-[50px] sm:min-w-[75px] sm:h-[75px] ring-4 ring-gray-300"><a href="/u/khardsonhurley"><img alt="Krishelle Hardson-Hurley HackerNoon profile picture" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="rounded-full" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;object-fit:cover;color:transparent" sizes="100vw" 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text-bodyTxtLight"><span class="text-xs font-light mr-1">by</span><a class="hover:underline" href="/u/khardsonhurley"><strong class="font-bold text-lightTextStrong">Krishelle Hardson-Hurley</strong></a><span class="text-xs font-light opacity-50">|</span><a class="hover:underline text-sm sm:text-base text-bodyTxtLight" href="/u/khardsonhurley">@<!-- -->khardsonhurley</a></div></div></div></div><p class="text-sm text-bodyTxtLight break-words overflow-wrap mt-4 mb-4 w-full">Site Reliability Engineer</p><div class="w-full mb-4"><div class="w-full flex justify-start"><div class="w-full"><form class="w-full flex flex-col items-start gap-2 "><div class="flex w-full"><input class="p-2 flex-grow border rounded-l-md text-lightText bg-light focus:outline-none focus:ring-0 focus:ring-transparent border-lightBorder w-full text-base px-2}
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py-3 px-4 sm:px-0 sm:py-6 "><h4 class="text-xl xs:text-2xl sm:text-3xl font-bold mb-4 sm:mb-6">TOPICS</h4><div class="flex flex-wrap gap-2"><div class=" flex flex-wrap items-center gap-2 border-lightBorder"><a href="/c/business" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-lg border-lightBorder hover:bg-lightAccent hover:text-lightAccentText hover:border-lightAccentText bg-lightAlt text-lightText flex items-center px-2 py-1 border rounded"><span class="mr-2"><i class="hn hn-business !leading-[inherit]"></i></span><span>business</span></a></div><a href="/tagged/devops" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-sm xs:text-base sm:text-lg flex items-center px-2 py-1 border hover:bg-lightAlt border-lightBorder rounded">#<!-- -->devops</a><a href="/tagged/software-development" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-sm xs:text-base sm:text-lg flex items-center px-2 py-1 border hover:bg-lightAlt border-lightBorder rounded">#<!-- -->software-development</a><a href="/tagged/sre" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-sm xs:text-base sm:text-lg flex items-center px-2 py-1 border hover:bg-lightAlt border-lightBorder rounded">#<!-- -->sre</a><a href="/tagged/careers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-sm xs:text-base sm:text-lg flex items-center px-2 py-1 border hover:bg-lightAlt border-lightBorder rounded">#<!-- -->careers</a><a href="/tagged/career-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-sm xs:text-base sm:text-lg flex items-center px-2 py-1 border hover:bg-lightAlt border-lightBorder rounded">#<!-- -->career-change</a></div></section></div></div></div></div></div><div class="min-h-[200px]"></div></main><div class="flex flex-col gap-4 hidden"><button class="mr-auto"><i class="hn-sun hn text-2xl"></i></button><h2 class="text-sm font-semibold text-darkText">Light-Mode</h2><div class="cursor-pointer p-3 rounded-lg hover:scale-105 transition-transform "><h3 class="text-sm uppercase mb-2 ">Classic</h3><div class="flex space-x-1"><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#0F0"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#F5EC43"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#212428"></span></div></div><div class="cursor-pointer p-3 rounded-lg hover:scale-105 transition-transform "><h3 class="text-sm uppercase mb-2 ">Newspaper</h3><div class="flex space-x-1"><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#FFFFFF"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#F5F5F5"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#454545"></span></div></div><div class="cursor-pointer p-3 rounded-lg hover:scale-105 transition-transform "><h3 class="text-sm uppercase mb-2 ">Proof of Usefulness</h3><div class="flex space-x-1"><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#FFFFFF"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#26AB5C"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#D2FBE2"></span></div></div><h2 class="text-sm font-semibold text-darkText">Dark-Mode</h2><div class="cursor-pointer p-3 rounded-lg hover:scale-105 transition-transform "><h3 class="text-sm uppercase mb-2 ">Neon Noir</h3><div class="flex space-x-1"><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#1E1E1E"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#0F0"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#F5EC43"></span></div></div><div class="cursor-pointer p-3 rounded-lg hover:scale-105 transition-transform "><h3 class="text-sm uppercase mb-2 ">Minty</h3><div class="flex space-x-1"><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#061F19"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#2AAA74"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#63FF86"></span></div></div><div class="cursor-pointer p-3 rounded-lg hover:scale-105 transition-transform "><h3 class="text-sm uppercase mb-2 ">Startups of the Year</h3><div class="flex space-x-1"><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#08085E"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#A2EF44"></span><span class="w-6 h-6 rounded border border-darkBorder" style="background-color:#1B1B95"></span></div></div></div></div></div><script id="__NEXT_DATA__" type="application/json">{"props":{"pageProps":{"data":{"pageLang":"en","datePublished":"2017-03-23","slug":"so-you-want-to-be-an-sre-34e832357a8c","articleBody":"About 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong. Hackbright Academy Dropbox Office Library in San Francisco, 2017 At Hackbright, we spent four weeks working on one . One might imagine, with such a small scale project, I didn’t think a ton about reliability and scalability. singular project It was not until I began speaking to industry professionals, specifically several SREs, that I realized I had an interest in thinking about large scale systems and making them scalable and reliable. I now work as a (SRE) on the Monitoring Team at Dropbox and I absolutely love the work that I am doing. I get to work with my teammates to design large scale systems as well as the internal tools that monitor them! Site Reliability Engineer Since I started at Dropbox, I have had the opportunity to speak with many career changers like me and share what I have learned over the past few months. The question that I am constantly asked is: What is an SRE, and how do I become one? This post is designed for those who are interested in learning more about SRE. I give a general explanation about the position, offer key questions to ask yourself before committing to applying to SRE roles and point to several resources to jumpstart your journey. What is an SRE anyway? To understand the answer to this question, it’s important that you learn a bit of history. Lets talk about the traditional approach to system management. Prior to Google’s creation of the SRE position, ran company operations. System Administrators What is a system administrator? A system administrator or ‘sysadmin’ is someone who is responsible for the configuration, upkeep and reliability of complex computing systems. They assemble software components (that are written by developers) and deploy them to produce a service. They monitor these services and respond if there are any events that occur with the service. System Administrators worked on the “operations” side of things, whereas engineers worked on the “development” side of things. What’s so bad about this approach? According to the , this approach caused division and conflict between developers and sysadmins. Because the two had different backgrounds, skills, and incentives, it meant that they had different vocabulary and thought about reliability very differently. Developers wanted new features to get out to users as quickly as possible whereas the operations team members (sysadmins) wanted to avoid breaking anything. Google saw the concerns with this approach and created the idea of “Site Reliability Engineering.” SRE Book So again, WHAT IS AN SRE? According to the creator of the position at Google, Ben Treynor defines SRE in as: this interview “Fundamentally, it’s what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations function…So SRE is fundamentally doing work that has historically been done by an operations team, but using engineers with software expertise, and banking on the fact that these engineers are inherently both predisposed to, and have the ability to, substitute automation for human labor.” Example of a data center Let me offer a concrete example on how SRE makes the “new way” even better. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit a data center just like the one you see pictured here. I toured several large warehouse sized rooms filled with thousands of machines. The magnitude of this space is remarkable. Now let’s say that one of the servers in the data center went down and needed to be replaced. With the “old way,” a new server would be configured manually by a system administrator. What this means is that the sysadmin would make sure the new machine has the proper operating system, software, tags, etc. Now imagine that 1,000 servers need to be replaced. See where I am going with this? It would take forever, or the company would need a lot of sysadmins to do the labor. manually Now consider the “new way” as described in this bullet point that I took from Dropbox’s Site Reliability Engineer Job posting: “You will automate the server provisioning process to reduce the labor of our networking engineering and datacenter operations teams. Once we plug a new server in, it walks itself through all aspects of provisioning to join the fleet without any human involvement.” Without any human involvement. In this example, an SRE would be responsible that automates the server configuration process. Cool right? This example really helped me to understand what an SRE truly is: for writing the software Site Reliability Engineer = Software Engineer + Systems Enthusiast According to , SRE Manager at Dropbox, Tammy Butow “SREs are Software Engineers who specialize in reliability. SREs apply the principles of computer science and engineering to the design and development of computer systems: generally, large distributed ones.” By eliminating human interaction through automation, SREs make systems more reliable. So essentially, an SRE’s job is to automate themselves out of a job. But Krishelle, why do you think this is cool? The reason I found this to be really cool is the same reason I decided to study math. Math allows you to utilize functions and rules to compute large scale problems. One of my favorite lessons from when I was teaching is based on this problem: The Staircase Problem Visual Aid “You own a landscaping business and one of your specialties is outdoor brick staircase. How many bricks would you need to bring if a customer ordered a 10-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 20-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 38-high stairwell?” Gauss’ Trick for summing the numbers from 1 to n My students quickly realized that counting the bricks was an okay strategy for the smaller staircases. But as I increased the height all the way to a 100-high stairwell, they were forced to find another way. They realized that math can be used as a tool to calculate large scale problems, avoiding a brute force approach (In my Algebra 1 courses, I would get students to discover they could use the equation n(n+1)/2 for the staircase problem.) Just as math is a tool for solving large scale problems, in the world of computers, code is a tool for managing large scale systems. It is a tool that allows for automating tasks through software and eliminating the need for manual human labor. Site Reliability Engineers are behind this work, they manage and automate these systems using their systems knowledge and their code, making the system more reliable with every bit. How do I know if SRE is right for me? This is a big question that comes up when I speak to job seekers considering pursuing SRE roles. I put together some important questions to ask yourself before you commit completely. SRE Compatibility Quiz Do you like thinking about large scale problems that have a lot of moving parts? Do you like thinking about how to make large systems more reliable? Are you okay with working on software that will likely never be overtly seen by an external user? Do you enjoy looking at a terminal for large amounts of time? Do you enjoy the process of diagnosing and fixing a problem? If yes, what if the diagnosis involves system level problems that you cannot always see? Do you enjoy thinking about system information (e.g. disk space, cpu, os, kernel, etc.) and system level functionality (e.g. ssh, proc, cron, swaps, etc.)? Are you comfortable with the idea of being “on-call” in which you are likely to be in high-stakes scenario where something needs to be fixed? Are you able to stay calm under pressure? Do you approach problems in a logical, process-oriented way? Are you comfortable attempting a problem that has never been solved before? Are you someone who thinks about how you can make things better? If you answered yes to at least 8 of these questions, SRE could be a good position for you. Read on to find more resources on SRE and a list of companies that offer SRE roles. So I really want to be an SRE, now what? There are many resources out there that are useful to start learning more about SRE, as well as gain the skills needed to obtain a role. Here are a few that I recommend starting with. Understanding SRE Role and Responsibilities Still trying to wrap your mind around what SRE means? Check out these resources: 🌐 — A website that contains Google’s definition of SRE, the transcript of an interview with the creator of the position, as well as other resources (including the ). Google’s SRE Resources online version of the SRE Book 🌐 — Realizing you may not be ready to go out and spend $40-$50 on the SRE book, this is an awesome set of notes on each chapter of the book by . SRE Book Notes Dan Luu 🎥 — A talk given by the creator of the SRE role Ben Treynor of Google. Keys to SRE 🎥 — A Webinar with Google SREs. Site Reliability Engineers — Keeping Google up and running 24/7 🎥 — A talk given by Tammy Butow, SRE Manager at Dropbox. Site Reliability Engineering at Dropbox 🎥 — A talk by Jonah Horowitz, SRE at Netflix. Site Reliability Engineering at Netflix 🎥 — A panel of SREs at SRECon16. Who/What is SRE? 📰 — An interview with Andrew Fong, an SRE manager at Dropbox. Andrew Fong on Tackling the Full Stack 📰 — An article about SRE at Google. Site Reliability Engineers: “We Solve Cooler Problems” 📰 — An article about SRE at Atlassian. Love DevOps? Wait until you meet SRE Companies that Hire SREs Curious which companies out there hire SREs? Here are just a few: Dropbox Google Netflix GitHub Atlassian Stripe Pinterest (called Production Engineer) Facebook (called DevOps Software Engineer) Reddit …and many ! I have linked to sample job posts so that you can get a feel for what SRE means at the different companies. more Resources for an Aspiring SRE Once you feel you have a handle on the definition of SRE, check out these resources to start expanding your skill set. General Resources 📰 — A comprehensive resource list that and I put together for Bootcamp Grads interested in SRE roles. Graduating from Bootcamp and interested in becoming a Site Reliability Engineer? Tammy Butow 📰 — A list of skills and mindsets of an SRE. The Must Know Checklist For DevOps \u0026 Site Reliability Engineers 🌐 — A Google Code University Course. Introduction to Distributed System Design 🌐 — An amazing curated list of SRE and Production Engineering resources by Pavlos Ratis. Definitely bookmark worthy if you become an SRE. Awesome Site Reliability Engineering Linux Resources Since I did not have a lot of Linux experience when I started my Junior-level SRE role, I have included a separate section for the tutorials and tools that I have found useful for learning Linux fundamentals. 🎥 — A series of awesome videos that breaks down key Linux concepts. Eli the Computer Guy’s Linux Video Series 🌐 — A step by step tutorial Unix/Linux Tutorial for Beginners 🌐 — A step by step tutorial. LinuxCommand.org 📋 Cheatography Linux Cheatsheet 📋 FossWire Linux Cheatsheet Twitter Accounts and Blogs to Follow Julia Evans on and Twitter Blog Brandan Gregg Eli Bendersky Several Nines Philip Fisher-Ogden Tammy Butow Nora Jones — Pavlos offers too! Pavlos Ratis follow recommendations SRE Weekly SREcon Dropbox Infrastructure Resources Dropbox’s Magic Pocket In addition to the Dropbox specific resources covered in , here are some others that made me super interested in working as an SRE at Dropbox: Tammy’s blog post 🎥 Magic Pocket 📰 Scaling to exabytes and beyond 📰 Inside the Magic Pocket 🌐 Dropbox Infrastructure Blog Found this post useful? Kindly tap the ❤ button below and share with friends considering SRE roles! About the author Krishelle is a former High School Math and Spanish Teacher turned Site Reliability Engineer at . about her journey from education to tech and connect with her on and . Dropbox Read Twitter LinkedIn Looking to make a Career Change but not sure where to start? Job Searching and not sure how to get organized? Check out these articles by Krishelle: Designing your Career Change ) How I Transitioned From Teaching to Engineering (Webinar Tools for Organizing Your Job Search","arweave":"15UWA_uz9k98gPrZ017GfwAJVUM_-QOvvOaiid1A4VQ","createdAt":"2017-03-23T22:15:09.573Z","excerpt":"\u003cspan\u003eA\u003c/span\u003ebout 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called \u003ca href=\"https://hackbrightacademy.com/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eHackbright Academy\u003c/a\u003e during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong.","featureImgColor":"rgb(41 114 208 / 70%)","firstSeenAt":false,"id":"so-you-want-to-be-an-sre-34e832357a8c","imageSizes":{"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*nZ4wRil67BpMxiqnPAlaBw.jpeg":{"width":1200,"height":800},"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*81rZO8X9h0GibRI6gRDe2Q.png":{"width":1000,"height":667},"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*2BQJ7JLccELHtK7pF4pr-g.png":{"width":288,"height":288},"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*oZNQTHC3jLlDRwqvVgIjXA.png":{"width":385,"height":127},"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*Vi_8nE67cXzNb2CdhHxAAw.png":{"width":1300,"height":760}},"mainImage":"https://hackernoon.imgix.net/hn-images/1*vhk8tkpKWTVz7GWcDWuocA.png","mainImageHeight":530,"mainImageWidth":1156,"mentions":[{"image":"http://logo.bigpicture.io/logo/atlassian.com","name":"ATLASSIAN","id":"atlassian","collection":"companies","manual":false},{"image":"http://logo.bigpicture.io/logo/dropbox.com","name":"Dropbox","id":"dropbox","collection":"companies","manual":false},{"image":"http://logo.bigpicture.io/logo/facebook.com","name":"Facebook","collection":"companies","id":"facebook","manual":false},{"image":"http://logo.bigpicture.io/logo/google.com","name":"Google","id":"google","collection":"companies","manual":false},{"image":"http://logo.bigpicture.io/logo/netflix.com","name":"Netflix","collection":"companies","id":"netflix","manual":false},{"image":"http://logo.bigpicture.io/logo/stripe.com","name":"Stripe","id":"stripe","collection":"companies","manual":false},{"image":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/img-a203mwd.jpeg","name":"Super","id":"super","collection":"companies","manual":false},{"image":"http://logo.bigpicture.io/logo/twitter.com","name":"Twitter","collection":"companies","id":"twitter","manual":false},{"image":null,"name":"YouTube","collection":"companies","id":"youtube","manual":false},{"image":"https://hackernoon.com/images/avatars/EPR0bNupBSWbOhQ7q15rVb7ladu2.jpg","displayName":"Tammy Butow","handle":"buttons","collection":"profiles","manual":false,"url":"https://hackernoon.com/u/buttons"},{"image":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/avatars/robot-b2.png","displayName":"Jonah Horowitz","handle":"jonahhorowitz","collection":"profiles","manual":false,"url":"https://hackernoon.com/u/jonahhorowitz"}],"owner":"khardsonhurley","parentCategory":"cloud","parsed":"\u003cp\u003eAbout 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called \u003ca href=\"https://hackbrightacademy.com/\"\u003eHackbright Academy\u003c/a\u003e during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*nZ4wRil67BpMxiqnPAlaBw.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDropbox Office Library in San Francisco, 2017\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt Hackbright, we spent four weeks working on one \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/khardsonhurley/Hackbright-Project\"\u003esingular project\u003c/a\u003e. One might imagine, with such a small scale project, I didn’t think a ton about reliability and scalability.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was not until I began speaking to industry professionals, specifically several SREs, that I realized I had an interest in thinking about large scale systems and making them scalable and reliable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI now work as a \u003ca href=\"https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/237271\"\u003eSite Reliability Engineer\u003c/a\u003e (SRE) on the Monitoring Team at Dropbox and I absolutely love the work that I am doing. I get to work with my teammates to design large scale systems as well as the internal tools that monitor them!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince I started at Dropbox, I have had the opportunity to speak with many career changers like me and share what I have learned over the past few months. The question that I am constantly asked is:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat is an SRE, and how do I become one?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis post is designed for those who are interested in learning more about SRE. I give a general explanation about the position, offer key questions to ask yourself before committing to applying to SRE roles and point to several resources to jumpstart your journey.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat is an SRE anyway?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo understand the answer to this question, it’s important that you learn a bit of history. Lets talk about the traditional approach to system management. Prior to Google’s creation of the SRE position, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator\"\u003eSystem Administrators\u003c/a\u003e ran company operations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat is a system administrator?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA system administrator or ‘sysadmin’ is someone who is responsible for the configuration, upkeep and reliability of complex computing systems.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThey assemble software components (that are written by developers) and deploy them to produce a service.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThey monitor these services and respond if there are any events that occur with the service.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSystem Administrators worked on the “operations” side of things, whereas engineers worked on the “development” side of things.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat’s so bad about this approach?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to the \u003ca href=\"http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920041528.do\"\u003eSRE Book\u003c/a\u003e, this approach caused division and conflict between developers and sysadmins. Because the two had different backgrounds, skills, and incentives, it meant that they had different vocabulary and thought about reliability very differently. Developers wanted new features to get out to users as quickly as possible whereas the operations team members (sysadmins) wanted to avoid breaking anything. Google saw the concerns with this approach and created the idea of “Site Reliability Engineering.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cem\u003eSo again, WHAT IS AN SRE?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to the creator of the position at Google, Ben Treynor defines SRE in \u003ca href=\"https://landing.google.com/sre/interview/ben-treynor.html\"\u003ethis interview\u003c/a\u003e as:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Fundamentally, it’s what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations function…So SRE is fundamentally doing work that has historically been done by an operations team, but using engineers with software expertise, and banking on the fact that these engineers are inherently both predisposed to, and have the ability to, substitute automation for human labor.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*81rZO8X9h0GibRI6gRDe2Q.png\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExample of a data center\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet me offer a concrete example on how SRE makes the “new way” even better.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit a data center just like the one you see pictured here. I toured several large warehouse sized rooms filled with thousands of machines. The magnitude of this space is remarkable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow let’s say that one of the servers in the data center went down and needed to be replaced. With the “old way,” a new server would be configured manually by a system administrator. What this means is that the sysadmin would \u003cem\u003emanually\u003c/em\u003e make sure the new machine has the proper operating system, software, tags, etc. Now imagine that 1,000 servers need to be replaced. See where I am going with this? It would take forever, or the company would need a lot of sysadmins to do the labor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow consider the “new way” as described in this bullet point that I took from Dropbox’s Site Reliability Engineer Job posting:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“You will automate the server provisioning process to reduce the labor of our networking engineering and datacenter operations teams. Once we plug a new server in, it walks itself through all aspects of provisioning to join the fleet without any human involvement.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWithout any human involvement.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this example, an SRE would be responsible \u003cem\u003efor writing the software\u003c/em\u003e that automates the server configuration process. Cool right? This example really helped me to understand what an SRE truly is:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSite Reliability Engineer = Software Engineer + Systems Enthusiast\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/tammybutow\"\u003eTammy Butow\u003c/a\u003e, SRE Manager at Dropbox,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“SREs are Software Engineers who specialize in reliability. SREs apply the principles of computer science and engineering to the design and development of computer systems: generally, large distributed ones.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy eliminating human interaction through automation, SREs make systems more reliable. So essentially, an SRE’s job is to automate themselves out of a job.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBut Krishelle, why do you think this is cool?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe reason I found this to be really cool is the same reason I decided to study math. Math allows you to utilize functions and rules to compute large scale problems. One of my favorite lessons from when I was teaching is based on this problem:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*2BQJ7JLccELHtK7pF4pr-g.png\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Staircase Problem Visual Aid\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“You own a landscaping business and one of your specialties is outdoor brick staircase. How many bricks would you need to bring if a customer ordered a 10-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 20-high stairwell? How many bricks would a customer need for a 38-high stairwell?”\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*oZNQTHC3jLlDRwqvVgIjXA.png\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGauss’ Trick for summing the numbers from 1 to n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy students quickly realized that counting the bricks was an okay strategy for the smaller staircases. But as I increased the height all the way to a 100-high stairwell, they were forced to find another way. They realized that math can be used as a tool to calculate large scale problems, avoiding a brute force approach (In my Algebra 1 courses, I would get students to discover they could use the equation n(n+1)/2 for the staircase problem.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust as math is a tool for solving large scale problems, in the world of computers, code is a tool for managing large scale systems. It is a tool that allows for automating tasks through software and eliminating the need for manual human labor. Site Reliability Engineers are behind this work, they manage and automate these systems using their systems knowledge and their code, making the system more reliable with every bit.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eHow do I know if SRE is right for me?\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a big question that comes up when I speak to job seekers considering pursuing SRE roles. I put together some important questions to ask yourself before you commit completely.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSRE Compatibility Quiz\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDo you like thinking about large scale problems that have a lot of moving parts?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDo you like thinking about how to make large systems more reliable?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAre you okay with working on software that will likely never be overtly seen by an external user?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDo you enjoy looking at a terminal for large amounts of time?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDo you enjoy the process of diagnosing and fixing a problem? If yes, what if the diagnosis involves system level problems that you cannot always see?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDo you enjoy thinking about system information (e.g. disk space, cpu, os, kernel, etc.) and system level functionality (e.g. ssh, proc, cron, swaps, etc.)?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAre you comfortable with the idea of being “on-call” in which you are likely to be in high-stakes scenario where something needs to be fixed?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAre you able to stay calm under pressure?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDo you approach problems in a logical, process-oriented way?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAre you comfortable attempting a problem that has never been solved before?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAre you someone who thinks about how you can make things better?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you answered yes to at least 8 of these questions, SRE could be a good position for you. Read on to find more resources on SRE and a list of companies that offer SRE roles.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eSo I really want to be an SRE, now what?\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are many resources out there that are useful to start learning more about SRE, as well as gain the skills needed to obtain a role. Here are a few that I recommend starting with.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eUnderstanding SRE Role and Responsibilities\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStill trying to wrap your mind around what SRE means? Check out these resources:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🌐 \u003ca href=\"https://landing.google.com/sre/\"\u003eGoogle’s SRE Resources\u003c/a\u003e — A website that contains Google’s definition of SRE, the transcript of an interview with the creator of the position, as well as other resources (including the \u003ca href=\"https://landing.google.com/sre/book/\"\u003eonline version of the SRE Book\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🌐 \u003ca href=\"http://danluu.com/google-sre-book/\"\u003eSRE Book Notes\u003c/a\u003e — Realizing you may not be ready to go out and spend $40-$50 on the SRE book, this is an awesome set of notes on each chapter of the book by \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/danluu?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\"\u003eDan Luu\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🎥 \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/n4Wf14e2jxQ\"\u003eKeys to SRE\u003c/a\u003e — A talk given by the creator of the SRE role Ben Treynor of Google.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🎥 \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/yXI7r0_J29M\"\u003eSite Reliability Engineers — Keeping Google up and running 24/7\u003c/a\u003e — A Webinar with Google SREs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🎥 \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggizCjUCCqE\u0026amp;feature=youtu.be\"\u003eSite Reliability Engineering at Dropbox\u003c/a\u003e — A talk given by Tammy Butow, SRE Manager at Dropbox.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🎥 \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/koGaH4ffXaU\"\u003eSite Reliability Engineering at Netflix\u003c/a\u003e — A talk by Jonah Horowitz, SRE at Netflix.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🎥 \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/P83XESU3oZ8\"\u003eWho/What is SRE?\u003c/a\u003e — A panel of SREs at SRECon16.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📰 \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/dropbox-makers/andrew-fong-on-tackling-the-full-stack-4bb2aa07e783#.e91gzb9ys\"\u003eAndrew Fong on Tackling the Full Stack\u003c/a\u003e — An interview with Andrew Fong, an SRE manager at Dropbox.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📰 \u003ca href=\"https://careers.google.com/stories/site-reliability-engineering-profile-google/\"\u003eSite Reliability Engineers: “We Solve Cooler Problems”\u003c/a\u003e — An article about SRE at Google.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📰 \u003ca href=\"https://www.atlassian.com/it-unplugged/devops/site-reliability-engineering-sre\"\u003eLove DevOps? Wait until you meet SRE\u003c/a\u003e — An article about SRE at Atlassian.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eCompanies that Hire SREs\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurious which companies out there hire SREs? Here are just a few:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/237271\"\u003eDropbox\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo\u0026amp;jid=/google/software-engineer-site-reliability-1600-amphitheatre-pkwy-mountain-view-ca-2500016\u0026amp;\"\u003eGoogle\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/861152\"\u003eNetflix\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://github.com/about/careers#positions\"\u003eGitHub\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Atlassian/110170651\"\u003eAtlassian\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://stripe.com/jobs/positions/site-reliability-engineer\"\u003eStripe\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon17americas/program/presentation/evans\"\u003ePinterest\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/a0I1200000Iglf8EAB/\"\u003eFacebook\u003c/a\u003e (called Production Engineer)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://boards.greenhouse.io/reddit/jobs/251080#.WOxdrDxHaEc\"\u003eReddit\u003c/a\u003e (called DevOps Software Engineer)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e…and many \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?keywords=Site%20Reliability%20Engineer\u0026amp;locationId=us%3A0\"\u003emore\u003c/a\u003e! I have linked to sample job posts so that you can get a feel for what SRE means at the different companies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eResources for an Aspiring SRE\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnce you feel you have a handle on the definition of SRE, check out these resources to start expanding your skill set.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eGeneral Resources\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📰 \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@tammybutow/graduating-from-bootcamp-and-interested-in-becoming-a-site-reliability-engineer-b69a38ce858b#.bpxamstwa\"\u003eGraduating from Bootcamp and interested in becoming a Site Reliability Engineer?\u003c/a\u003e — A comprehensive resource list that \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/tammybutow?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\"\u003eTammy Butow\u003c/a\u003e and I put together for Bootcamp Grads interested in SRE roles.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📰 \u003ca href=\"https://hackernoon.com/the-must-know-checklist-for-devops-system-reliability-engineers-f74c1cbf259d#.9t38pcyiq\"\u003eThe Must Know Checklist For DevOps \u0026amp; Site Reliability Engineers\u003c/a\u003e — A list of skills and mindsets of an SRE.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🌐 \u003ca href=\"http://www.hpcs.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/~tatebe/lecture/h23/dsys/dsd-tutorial.html\"\u003eIntroduction to Distributed System Design\u003c/a\u003e — A Google Code University Course.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🌐 \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/dastergon/awesome-sre\"\u003eAwesome Site Reliability Engineering\u003c/a\u003e — An amazing curated list of SRE and Production Engineering resources by Pavlos Ratis. Definitely bookmark worthy if you become an SRE.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eLinux Resources\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince I did not have a lot of Linux experience when I started my Junior-level SRE role, I have included a separate section for the tutorials and tools that I have found useful for learning Linux fundamentals.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🎥 \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gCwCOhMcog\u0026amp;list=PLD6B6473ACF32C59D\"\u003eEli the Computer Guy’s Linux Video Series\u003c/a\u003e — A series of awesome videos that breaks down key Linux concepts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🌐 \u003ca href=\"http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/\"\u003eUnix/Linux Tutorial for Beginners\u003c/a\u003e — A step by step tutorial\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🌐 \u003ca href=\"http://linuxcommand.org/index.php\"\u003eLinuxCommand.org\u003c/a\u003e — A step by step tutorial.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📋 \u003ca href=\"https://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/linux-command-line/\"\u003eCheatography Linux Cheatsheet\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📋 \u003ca href=\"https://files.fosswire.com/2007/08/fwunixref.pdf\"\u003eFossWire Linux Cheatsheet\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eTwitter Accounts and Blogs to Follow\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJulia Evans on \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/b0rk\"\u003eTwitter\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://jvns.ca/\"\u003eBlog\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/brendangregg\"\u003eBrandan Gregg\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/elibendersky\"\u003eEli Bendersky\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/severalnines\"\u003eSeveral Nines\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/philip_pfo\"\u003ePhilip Fisher-Ogden\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/tammybutow\"\u003eTammy Butow\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/nora_js\"\u003eNora Jones\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/dastergon\"\u003ePavlos Ratis\u003c/a\u003e — Pavlos offers \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/dastergon/awesome-sre#blogs\"\u003efollow recommendations\u003c/a\u003e too!\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://sreweekly.com/\"\u003eSRE Weekly\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/SREcon\"\u003eSREcon\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eDropbox Infrastructure Resources\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://hackernoon.com/hn-images/1*Vi_8nE67cXzNb2CdhHxAAw.png\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDropbox’s Magic Pocket\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn addition to the Dropbox specific resources covered in \u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@tammybutow/graduating-from-bootcamp-and-interested-in-becoming-a-site-reliability-engineer-b69a38ce858b#.gfaz5j9lr\"\u003eTammy’s blog post\u003c/a\u003e, here are some others that made me super interested in working as an SRE at Dropbox:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🎥 \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/QULM7M98TLo\"\u003eMagic Pocket\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📰 \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/03/magic-pocket-infrastructure/\"\u003eScaling to exabytes and beyond\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e📰 \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/inside-the-magic-pocket/\"\u003eInside the Magic Pocket\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e🌐 \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/category/infrastructure/\"\u003eDropbox Infrastructure Blog\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFound this post useful? Kindly tap the ❤ button below and share with friends considering SRE roles!\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eAbout the author\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKrishelle is a former High School Math and Spanish Teacher turned Site Reliability Engineer at \u003ca href=\"http://www.dropbox.com\"\u003eDropbox\u003c/a\u003e. \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5824e18ce4b094483eef3690?timestamp=1478812083540\"\u003eRead\u003c/a\u003e about her journey from education to tech and connect with her on \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/khardsonhurley\"\u003eTwitter\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/khardsonhurley\"\u003eLinkedIn\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooking to make a Career Change but not sure where to start? Job Searching and not sure how to get organized? Check out these articles by Krishelle:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://hackbrightacademy.com/blog/3-key-elements-designing-career-change/\"\u003eDesigning your Career Change\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://medium.com/@khardsonhurley/4-ways-i-celebrated-womens-history-month-this-year-dec06997d78f\"\u003eHow I Transitioned From Teaching to Engineering (Webinar\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://hackernoon.com/8-tools-for-organizing-your-job-search-post-bootcamp-abe9b2d54c12#.7iz84p4n1\"\u003eTools for Organizing Your Job Search\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","profile":{"avatar":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/avatars/robot-b6.png","bio":"Site Reliability Engineer","callToActions":[],"displayName":"Krishelle Hardson-Hurley","handle":"khardsonhurley","allowSubscribers":true},"publishedAt":1490307309.573,"tags":["devops","software-development","sre","careers","career-change"],"title":"So you want to be an SRE?","backlinks":{"fetched":"2025-02-11T21:05:12.894Z","urls":["https://robhirschfeld.com/category/clouds/page/3/","https://josephliu.co/podcast/episode23/","https://www.getfreeebooks.com/413-site-reliability-and-production-engineering-resources-tools/","https://marmelab.com/blog/2018/05/24/site-reliability-engineering","https://slides.com/kmaschta/errors-budget-sre","https://www.gitplanet.com/project/awesome-sre","https://www.algodaily.com/companies/dropbox","https://blog.knoldus.com/difference-devops-sre/","https://softdevpk.com/career-paths/DevOps/","https://toppodcast.com/podcast_feeds/career-relaunch/","https://opensource-heroes.com/r/dastergon/awesome-sre","https://weekly.techbridge.cc/techbridge-95","https://gitmemories.com/dastergon/awesome-sre","https://hacksnation.com/d/1614-413-site-reliability-and-production-engineering-resources-tools","https://thechief.io/c/blameless/getting-started-sre-here-are-3-things-you-need-know/","https://algodaily.com/companies/dropbox","https://www.scionova.com/devops-and-sre-where-do-you-draw-the-line/","https://marmelab.com/blog/2018/05/24/site-reliability-engineering.html","https://robhirschfeld.com/tag/infrastructure/","https://www.gitplanet.com/project/sre11701438762799764","https://wx-chevalier.github.io/books/awesome-lists/03.system/02.microcn/ha/sre-list/","https://dev.sh20raj.com/kmaschta/site-reliability-engineering-googles-secret-sauce-for-high-availability-and-happy-ops-34li","https://udbjorg.net/2017/07/Link-is-a-pattern-in-a-stream-of-decisions.empty"]},"draftId":"so-you-want-to-be-an-sre-34e832357a8c","tldr":"\u003cspan\u003eA\u003c/span\u003ebout 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called \u003ca href=\"https://hackbrightacademy.com/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eHackbright Academy\u003c/a\u003e during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong.","super_category":"business","annotations":[],"coAuthorProfiles":[],"commentsCount":1,"fromMongo":true,"relatedStories":[{"title":"\"DevOps Engineers Boost the Efficiency and Profitability of High-Tech Business\" - Vasilii Angapov","mainImage":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/IymvKKTnYPZ9oRrN7IjNRPC4QKr1-29a3y80.jpeg","slug":"devops-engineers-boost-the-efficiency-and-profitability-of-high-tech-business-vasilii-angapov","tags":["devops","interview","software-development","machine-learning","cloud-computing","software-architecture","devops-engineer-interview","how-to-be-a-devops-engineer"],"excerpt":"DevOps guru Vasilii Angapov discusses enhancing tech business efficiency. With expertise in cloud tech, he underscores the value of lifelong learning in IT.","publishedAt":1697591771375,"profile":{"handle":"antagonist","avatar":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/IymvKKTnYPZ9oRrN7IjNRPC4QKr1-43935g7.jpeg","displayName":"Aremu Adebisi","isBrand":false},"recommended":true},{"title":"DevOps — What it is and How to Prepare for Seamless Transition to it?","mainImage":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/ivL2nmkXhheEpvHCV8ApEr00QkE3-pp137jt.jpeg","slug":"devops-what-it-is-and-how-to-prepare-for-seamless-transition-to-it","tags":["devops","devops-tools","devops-transformation","what-is-devops","good-company","transition-to-devops","benefits-of-devops","rise-of-devops"],"excerpt":"Want to shift to DevOps but not sure where, to begin with? Here’re some steps you must follow to start the transition to DevOps.","publishedAt":1638573878059,"profile":{"handle":"addwebsolution01","avatar":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/ivL2nmkXhheEpvHCV8ApEr00QkE3-wp93xrp.jpeg","displayName":"AddWeb Solution"},"recommended":true},{"title":"DevOps + Data: DevOps for Data Management","mainImage":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/ZXvwWhuaiAY0BoWkm8U7fJ1XTLI2-3803ebz.jpeg","slug":"devops-data-devops-for-data-management","tags":["dataops","devops","data-management","development","managed-it-services","cloud","software-infrastructure","devops-for-data-management"],"excerpt":"Fresh Approaches to Effective Data Management.\nWhat if we applied the existing DevOps techniques and patterns to the management ?","publishedAt":1642720979989,"profile":{"handle":"kksudo","avatar":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/7VSCPGQsadPKgblLb7AQviRi2pN2-5f233lb.jpeg","displayName":"Kazakov Kirill"},"recommended":true},{"title":"DevOps 101: CI/CD [Explained]","mainImage":"https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1533136251085-1abf189c72e0?ixlib=rb-1.2.1\u0026q=80\u0026fm=jpg\u0026crop=entropy\u0026cs=tinysrgb\u0026w=1080\u0026fit=max\u0026ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEwMDk2Mn0","slug":"devops-101-cicd-explained-ow6x32io","tags":["devops","cicd","continuous-delivery","continuous-deployment","latest-tech-stories","hackernoon-top-story","what-is-cicd","cicd-explained-in-detail"],"excerpt":"[This is part of a DevOps 101 Series written by Kat Cosgrove, Developer Advocate at JFrog.]","publishedAt":1589267925325,"profile":{"handle":"jfrog","avatar":"https://hackernoon.com/images/avatars/HWmtTj0tnVP6UHDIelJjNifwQi52.jpg","displayName":"JFrog"},"recommended":true},{"title":"DevOps 2.0: The Value of SRE","mainImage":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/0iLZS0EAHjOT81T5HseCwcYbMHn2-cjb3jfq.jpeg","slug":"devops-20-the-value-of-sre","tags":["devops","devops-vs-sre","sre","devops-principles","devops-top-story","site-reliability-engineering","good-company","technology"],"excerpt":"Mixing DevOps and SRE gives a brilliant outcome. Learn more about site reliability and its principles to ensure business growth and top tech performance.","publishedAt":1655161411949,"profile":{"handle":"corewide","avatar":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/0iLZS0EAHjOT81T5HseCwcYbMHn2-9b83dpl.png","displayName":"Corewide ","isBrand":true},"recommended":true},{"title":"DevOps and Behind the Scenes","mainImage":"https://hackernoon.com/fallback-feat.png","slug":"devops-behind-scenes-817d586a1548","tags":["devops","engineer","computer-science","information-technology","continuous-integration"],"excerpt":"First of all, this is not an article for telling everyone what \u003ca href=\"https://hackernoon.com/tagged/devops\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDevOps\u003c/a\u003e is. There are dozens of those out there. This, however, is the bitter truth of the IT business and what DevOps approach can provide to your business.","publishedAt":1528720741503,"profile":{"handle":"esergozcu","avatar":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/avatars/robot-b2.png","displayName":"Eser Gozcu"},"recommended":true},{"title":"DevOps and CI/CD Collaboration: Bridging the Gap for Efficient\nSoftware Development","mainImage":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/9WBA7FGVtXYR4G5x8a9OiGEENuI3-iaa3xlr.jpeg","slug":"devops-and-cicd-collaboration-bridging-the-gap-for-efficient-software-development","tags":["devops","cicd","software-development","innovation","technology","mobile-app-development","tech-innovations","founder-advice"],"excerpt":"Unlock the power of DevOps and CI/CD collaboration with our easy steps. 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","publishedAt":1607938849996,"profile":{"handle":"smosgr","avatar":"https://cdn.hackernoon.com/avatars/robot-a6.png"},"recommended":true},{"title":"DevOps as-a-Service OR Do you Really Need a DevOps Team","mainImage":"drafts/ars03yeh.png","slug":"devops-as-a-service-or-do-you-really-need-a-devops-team-cc4q32wj","tags":["devops","devops-security","devops-principles","devops-tools","container-devops","devops-infrastructure","devops-challenges","devops-for-machine-learning"],"excerpt":"DevOps as a service is a rising philosophy in purpose development. DevOps as a method moves customary teamwork to development and process team to the make unclear, where lots of the method can be robotic using stackable virtual expansion tools. 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