Why are you joining as a SRE instead of a SWE?

My reading-between-the-lines is that Google has more open SRE positions than non-SRE positions. SRE wasn't what I was necessarily pursuing. But no job is perfect and this seems like a good opportunity.

Primarily, the reason I'm still considering this one was the people. I spoke with my potential manager and her boss. I think I'm at a point in my career where a good management fit is just as important as a good work fit. When I asked about their management philosophy, they both gave great answers.

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When you were doing "pure development", were you involved in the operational side of things at all?

My current project doesn't really have "operations" per se. It's a plugin to desktop software. So I do sometimes get sucked into customer issues when they get to be too tricky for support to handle, but that's pretty rare.

I do application-level administration of our source control server, and I was previously responsible (briefly) for our build infrastructure. But there is no "on call" for either.

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I find SRE work really stressful and very different skillset from what I'm good at

To clarify, do you do SRE work at Google or at another company? My impression is that SRE has a different tone at Google than in most other places.

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I would say the things I do as a "pure developer" are more akin to creative expression rather than engineering though.

I would say similar things. I think it's often a weird melange of math and art. We need to be much more precise than with other forms of creative expression, but creativity plays a huge role in it.

Still, I wonder if I could gain something by embracing the "engineering" mindset. It would be a stretch, sure, but I think it could be a good stretch for me. That's why I haven't dismissed SRE completely.