LinkedIn Site Reliability Engineer vs Engineering roles
May 8, 2019
11 Comments
The recruiter asked me if I am interested in SRE roles or Engineering roles. My understanding was that Engineering roles are better because:
1. You actually write and architect code.
2. Don't do constant fire fighting.
3. Pay is higher.
4. You are more valuable to the company.
5. Have better career prospects.
What do you guys (and gals) think ?
comments
No? Then don't take any job that requires on call.
2. Yeah no fire fighting in dev
3. Nope. But this is subjective. But you cannot compare bw dev and sre
4. Depends on team and your competence.
5. Sure, SRE culture at other companies is not yet as evolved as in LinkedIn, Google
So coming back to your observation, yes SRE has to to some support work and the dev work may not be as boner-inducing as per say an iOS or a backend service team but it nevertheless is important. If in your observation, SRE= running htop and looking for abnormalities then you should look at some good SRE teams in FB, LI, Google, Dropbox to name a few. It is definitely not for everyone and can get frustrating sometimes. You cannot work in silo like some product-engg teams which could be a good or bad thing. Also, there is a saddening gender imbalance when it comes to female representation in SRE barring probably Google and Facebook.