Recently, I got matched with a team in Google SRE for L4. The work seems interesting, and I'm inclined to accept. However, this is new to me and is different than the software developer role I'm used to. I want to give it a try though. I wanted to know if it's easy to switch to a SWE role after a year or so in case the SRE role doesn't work out. Has anyone done that? #google #sre #swe
SRE is a highly respected role. Take it. You'll learn a lot. You can always transfer later
Congrats op
What’s your offer and location?
Yes, as far as I know you can switch between them without a problem
Yes. You can switch. Two of my teammates made this switch.
This is probably dated, BUT back when SRE started (2004ish) there were two types of SRE: SRE SWE and SRE SA. SRE SWE could transfer to SWE easily, SRE SA would have to reinterview to change roles. The fucked thing is that they didn't tell you which one you were hired as. And for the most part it didn't matter. Until you wanted to transfer... and then some people were free and others were not. This fucked a very senior SRE, and despite pointing to thousands of lines of C++ code they were forced to reinterview to escape SRE. What determined which one you were hired as? Your interview loop. The recruiter would pick SWE heavy or SA heavy interviews based on what they thought you'd pass. Mine actually asked me which loop I would prefer. I said I could rock either one (I was young and cocky... but also right). I picked SWE because my job prior to SRE was SWE. I left the Google a decade ago, so it has possibly changed since then... but it can't hurt to ask, and it might be important.
Thanks for sharing your experience. The recruiter offered me similar choices as well. There were three interview loops, general SWE, SRE, or a mix of the two. I interviewed for the general SWE. I pretty much had all coding rounds. So I guess the process hasn't changed much.
FWIW I did the "I'll go back to SWE if I hate it" jump 15 years ago. I'm still working in SRE today.
Location/org?
Late to the party but SWE-SRE at Google is really respected and they are pretty much SWE. Would take it in a heartbeat.
Congratulations! Take it! What location/org did you match to? How long were you in team matching?
Are you also in TM?
Yeah
I'm on the same boat.