SRE Teams: Stats, Hacker News discussion & newsletter feedbacks
Summary of the discussions after issue #1 of SRE Teams on Hacker News. The road ahead, and feedback channels.
Hello, and welcome to the SRE Teams newsletter. I’m Andrios, and each week I write about how different companies are implementing SRE.
Before posting the next company, I thought it would be interesting to discuss the first issue's repercussions—the project's goals and how you can influence the content.
Here is what we will cover:
Some exciting stats on the first issue.
Important views from the Hacker News thread.
How to give feedback and where you can find me.
Off to a good start
The first post got nice feedback from all my networks. Quite a few people read and subscribed after I shared it on Linkedin and Twitter. But things changed when I posted it to Hacker News. It got more than 10 thousand HN visitors. People shared it more than 3 thousand times with their friends. And a huge chunk of the readers subscribed.
My network is small. This is the biggest reach something I did ever got. I have to thank you for trusting the project. I will work hard not to disappoint you and make sure the content improves over time.
The reach also speaks to how early we are in the field of SRE. This project will help teams leverage what is working and learn from similar companies' failures. There is a lot of content available on how Google did things; let’s uncover what happens with the rest of the world.
The spectrum of SRE visions
Skip this session if you read the Hacker News thread.
The post on Hacker News also generated many discussions. A big part of it was not about the newsletter itself. The field, in general, got a lot of interesting arguments. Engineers of different company sizes, from Google SREs to sysadmins of traditional banks, shared their visions and opinions about SRE in their companies and past jobs.
There are two extreme visions about SRE in the HN community. One is: let’s follow what Google is doing. The other: SRE doesn’t exist; it’s a rebranding of traditional ops. Of course, most people are at some point in the middle of the two extremes in the spectrum.
What most people agreed on was that replicating what Google is doing is really problematic. The principles are interesting, but they have to consider each company's reality. The discussion showed how valuable it would be to have more data points about how different companies approach SRE. Thus, this newsletter.
Replicating what Google is doing is really problematic. The principles are interesting, but they have to consider each company's reality.
Feedback and contacts
Another thing I liked in Hacker News was the feedback on the newsletter. There were critiques on formatting and writing style, requests for more technical details, and others. I want to encourage any feedback so I can adapt the content. Feel free to reach out, tell me what you don’t like, what you want to see more, or say hi.
Here is how you can reach me:
If you are reading in your inbox, send a reply to the e-mail.
Or shoot an e-mail to rob @ decimals.app
DM me on Twitter @andriosrobert
Connect on Linkedin
Thanks
Thank you again for trusting the project. The next SRE Teams profile is coming out soon. Meanwhile, please share the word with your friends, and let’s help each other by sharing knowledge.