SWE to Site Reliability Engineer
Is it a good transition from SWE to SRE ? I recently got an invite to apply for Google SRE position. I’m not sure how the interview will be. Is it going to be similar to SWE like leetcode and systems design ? What are the future career prospects of SRE ? #software #careeradvice TC : 100k YOE: 5
Downgrade. SRE’s are the first to go. Most of SRE duties have been built into tools that SWE’s can use, so they aren’t strictly necessary anymore
Oh okay. But does SRE get promoted to SWE then ?
lmao
Downgrade
Thanks for the response.
Google SRE & SWE have basically the same interview loop. Except for the technical rounds will also include Linux based questions/scenarios. Given this, you are able to transfer between SWE & SRE without much hassle. Comp bands are the same for both.
Yeah but SRE is still worse
@twilio Good info. Thank you very much. Just curious as everyone said it’s a downgrade, would you hire a SRE for a SWE position. I may be thinking a little ahead now but still just want to know if HM would be interested.
I'm an sre. Most places sre is glorified sysadmin. Same pay band as swe anyway. Every team I've been on has needed an sre desperately. Another perspective is SWE's usually transition to sre and start from almost 0. But almost all SREs can make it through a leetcode medium interview. All that being said I'll likely transition to SWE after learning all I can.
@twitter Thanks for sharing your perspective. I also do some sysadmin work at my job but I can relate to what you mean when you say starting from 0. Coding can be learnt but admin tasks takes up so much time and debugging.
Do you keep moving between teams based on team requirements ?
LOL at random people having no idea about Google SRE saying it's a downgrade. 100% it's not! At least not at Google! At other places it may differ, but Production Engineering at Facebook seems to be quite respected as well. If you think it's easier to get to SRE than SWE - it's not! You actually have to be comfortable with Linux to pass at least one admin round, in addition to LeetCode.
Thanks for the clarification.
My partner is an SRE and it sounds like a pretty valuable job. From what I've heard, the point of it is to automate yourself out of a job, and if you're good at it, you're going to be ahead of whatever tool SWEs are using to emulate what you do.
Good to know. Thank you.
I used to work at Google. SWEs run the show. You definitely want SWE instead of SRE if you can get it.
It's more difficult to get SRE. If you can't get SRE, by all means go to SWE.
SWE don’t run the show because it’s different org. You have clearly not been on a SRE team before.
Google SRE is basically SWE working on distributed and reliability stuff. They have the same reputation as SWE within Google. SWE transfer to SRE team all the time and vice versa.
That’s great to hear.
Does the technical round test on LC and systems design similar to SWE ?
One thing I notice on the job posting is they are calling it Software engineer, Site reliability engineering. That means it’s SRE right ?
There’s two SRE tracks at Google SWE-SRE: same as SWE and same interview loop. Can change back and forth between SWE and SRE teams SE-SRE: a bit different interview, you get a sysad type intervie
Oh okay. Thank you.
Downgrade imo
Thanks for the response.
Lol. Downgrade. Google SRE and SWE are lateral move.