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This article really ought to be titled "Who makes sure Google never goes down". It's pretty scant on actual details about SRE there.
Ok, we'll use that.
Didn't read the article yet. But if Google wants to be 100% sure that it NEVER goes down. It should just ask my girlfriend for tips.
Flagging because we don't need a second day of front page items being marketing posts for a book. Google is using it's press contacts to try and get this book on the bestseller list to make their company look good, we get it. An ad for a book isn't HN-worthy.
I'll agree that the article was somewhat lacking on actual detail.
SRE is a wild ride :)

I was a Google SRE for two years. Three months after joining I was about to go oncall for the first time and I was worried about "what happens if I get paged!"

The first day of my first shift, before lunch, I got paged twelve times. It was trial by fire. My teammates coined the term "Gabriel Shift" to describe an oncall shift when everything catches fire at the same time.

It was stressful, but I did miss the adrenaline when I moved to SWE. It's cliche, but it made me feel alive :)

To my former brothers in arms: THIS IS A PAGE FROM TELEBOT. TELEBOT TELEBOT TELEBOT.

ACK
STFU

So many stories of texting "STFU" to your SO and "I love you" to Telebot...

Ah, STFU was the most wonderful command. When I was on call for my service at the big G as a swe, we dreamed of the day that the SREs would take over.
Have to take issue with this reduction by the article's author:

> Don’t get IT people who specialize in running Internet services to run your Internet services. Have software coders run them instead.

The point is that one should consider the former to be a subset of the latter.

Wow they're pimping this new book hard, aren't they?
This is how the press earns exclusive interviews with high ranking executives at Google. Same stuff as when "How Google Works" was released.
holy hell really pushing the new SRE book really hard