Something has been frustrating me about “SRE” for a long time.
It seems that SRE as a job title has been diluted to little more than on-call support, undoing years of lessons learned by the tech industry around mature production operations.
It feels like every week, someone posts to r/SRE with their frustrations, only to discover that their job isn’t SRE at all, despite their title. I sometimes comment to provide some guidance and support, but I’ve seen this trend only get worse with time.
The recent uptick of “AI SRE” SaaS products has only reinforced this trend. Resolve AI’s glossary defines it this way:
An AI SRE (Artificial Intelligence Site Reliability Engineer) is an autonomous AI agent that detects, investigates, and resolves production incidents without human intervention.
Result: engineers that want to do SRE aren’t, and companies that wish to implement SRE aren’t either. Both groups lose.
It’s time to reclaim SRE - its original meaning, intent, and practices.
I built Reclaim SRE to clarify what SRE actually is, how companies that aren’t Google can implement it now, and provides guidance to practitioners, job seekers, leaders, and recruiters on how to reverse this trend.
How you can help:
- Share the link with anyone it would help.
- If you see SRE misused, send them the link.
- Feedback/suggestions on the content? Comments are welcome.