Tech IndustryAug 8, 2019
NewXptM28

SRE — pigeonholing/career deadend? Should I stick with SWE?

I’ve received an offer from an acquired startup that I’ve heard a lot of good things about. SRE’s and SWE’s transfer in and out of each org without having to re-interview. The SRE team is only two years old, and fairly small. The manager said the ops:development ratio is 60:40, with the intention to flip that ratio soon, by the end of next year. I’m still planning on coding to keep my dev skills sharp on the side. I’m concerned that being an SRE, after being a SWE in low-level kernel programming, will possibly pigeonhole me or worse, lead to a career deadend. I don’t have a lot of experience with ops, cloud, or containerization, so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot. But I’m particularly concerned recruiters will just pass on me for SWE roles in the future (this will be my second role). YoE: 3 years TC: 150k

Capital One tdp Aug 8, 2019

Not a good idea. 60/40 90/10. Who knows the difference.

Google batmobile Aug 8, 2019

Definitely not a dead end. You can learn a lot about distributed systems which is quite beneficial for your career. If you dont like it, just change back to SWE after a year or two.

Google pgtss Aug 9, 2019

True SWE-SRE companies as Google are amazing.