As SREs, we need to build the narrative of our work’s value.
the future of all software is at stake.

@caseyrosenthal builds a beautifully illustrated narrative at #SREcon ImageImage
Like Security, SRE’s value hides in all the incidents that don’t happen.
So its easy to ignore. But people and legislative bodies value it.

The Success in SRE is Silent Image
and if our success remains silent, our profession (and software development in general) will go the way of security: regulation. Image
Regulation means more gatekeeping, for people and for small companies. it means enforced “best practices” that are counterproductive and suck the joy out of our work.
@caseyrosenthal #srecon22 Image
How can we demonstrate the value of SRE?
not quantitative methods. Metrics like nines of availability or MTTR don’t represent customer experience. Image
Describe SRE success with qualitative methods. Ask developers for reactions, for learning. Notice behavior change. And then (with the most effort) demonstrate business results.
Note that the outcome is not “reliability.” We can’t “prove reliability.”

@caseyrosenthal #srecon22 Image
SRE is not only slaying monsters. Our work is organizational learning, and the business results enabled by that.

Telling the story of the value of our work on availability can preserve our freedom to learn, improve, and grow the field.

@caseyrosenthal #srecon22 ImageImageImage
… bonus photos of amazing slides ImageImageImageImage

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More from @jessitron

Mar 15
This afternoon at #srecon, Adam Mckaig and Tahia Khan from @datadoghq about the evolution of their metrics backend Image
The high-level architecture looks very familiar to me. The slightly more detailed less so — many parts! ImageImage
For scale, break up incoming data, put into kafka.
hash(customer_id) -> partition_id
… but then one kafka topic gets overloaded, so…
hash(customer_id) -> topic_id, partition_id
to send to topics in different clusters. ImageImage
Read 6 tweets
Mar 15
Today at #srecon, @allspaw and @ri_cook give deep insight on real tools, incident timelines, and clumsy automation.
But not in person. 😭 Image
Great tools (as opposed to machines) are near to hand and conform to the person who wields them. Like a hammer, or `top`. Yeah.
They are opinionated, but not prescriptive.

(machines do what they do, and you conform to them) ImageImage
In software, tools like `top` help us see what’s going on in the digital space.
@ri_cook et al see our work taking place on two sides of a divide. There’s meatspace (where we are) and digital space (where the software runs). You can’t reach out and feel digital stuffs. Image
Read 13 tweets
Mar 14
What can we learn from ALL the incidents?
@courtneynash at @verica_io compiles reports from lots of companies into the VOID: Verica Open Incident Database. #SREcon ImageImageImageImage
“Software runs the world, and you run that software.”
#SREcon @courtneynash Image
While every incident and every company is different, the distributions have the same shape. They are “positively skewed:” more short incidents than long ones. ImageImage
Read 7 tweets
Feb 13
Today in #golang:

fmt.Println("What is truth?", true)

can output:

What is truth? false
because Go lets you do this:

`true := false`
The local variable `true` overrides the keyword!?

Go obstinately protects you from declaring an unused variable or importing an unused library.

But shadow a keyword? ooookaaaaay
Read 4 tweets
Dec 16, 2021
People.
There is a difference between a backend and an API.

Taking the endpoints that you wrote for your site, slapping some documentation on them and publishing it
does not make an API.
An API needs designing. It needs a conscious language and consistent conventions.
Standard auth.
Paging.
Careful error codes and messages.
Versioning.
A backend is whatever your front end needs. It should change when your front end needs it to change.
Don’t restrict it to historical behavior because other systems have grown dependent on it.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 20, 2021
“so that we have a single process for the entire organization”
is a death toll of software.
This is how large organizations slow themselves.

Unifying process gives every change a wide impact, and that means change must be slow.
“But architecture is important! It affects the whole organization! We must take it seriously.”

Importance implies a single process; a single process implies slowness.
Single careful process does _not_ imply the best solution is reached.
Instead, it retards iteration.

A single careful process _does_ imply a defensible solution will be reached.
Read 7 tweets

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