Hiring SREs may be literally impossible

If we're gonna do this SRE thing, we need to find the right people to do it.

After a few recent discussions, it became clear just how much everyone—at large companies and small—is struggling to find those people.

You can barely get enough applicants in the door, and by the time you've run your interview process you're left making a handful of offers.

Hiring SREs from the outside world is a competitive, expensive game to play. So why focus so much on people outside your company? You've got potential SREs sat all around you!

In this talk, we'll set the scene with a little look at the realities of hiring SREs. We won't stay there for too long though, because that's not what's going to save us!

The bulk of the talk will be spent looking at ways to discover budding SREs in your organisation, how to nurture their interest, and how to coach them in a role that's new to them.

Transcript

1. Hi
2. @ChrisSinjo
3. Hiring SREs @ChrisSinjo
4. Hiring SREs may be @ChrisSinjo
5. Hiring SREs may be literally @ChrisSinjo
6. Hiring SREs may be literally impossible @ChrisSinjo
7. An SRE
8. GOCARDLESS
9. An conference
10. An friend
11. An dumb comment
12. –Some dumbass “Hiring SREs may be literally impossible”
13. Except it’s literally true
14. People at all kinds of companies
15. People can’t hire quickly enough
16. 1. The problem 2. A solution
17. What’s the problem?
18. "Even by Google’s overall standards, SRE candidates are difficult to find and even harder to interview effectively." –SRE Book, Part IV: Management
19. SRE is weird
20. Full of breadth
21. Databases Caches Queues Proxies Networking (L4, L7) DNS Operating systems Observability Provisioning Packaging & deployment
22. etc
23. https://jvns.ca/blog/so-you-want-to-be-a-wizard/
24. Full of depth
25. Knowledge Things
26. Knowledge Things “That” incident
27. Knowledge Things “That” incident Your primary database
28. https://gocardless.com/blog/in-search-of-performance-how-we-shaved-200ms-off- every-post-request/
29. On-call is daunting
30. Knowledge Things “That” incident
32. A new take on existing roles
33. Sure, we have DevOps
34. DevOps is an approach, not a role
35. SRE is more specific
36. How are we doing?
37. 2017 so far
38. 2017 so far 160 applicants
39. 2017 so far 160 applicants 45 VM challenge
40. 2017 so far 160 applicants 45 VM challenge 15 final round
41. 2017 so far 160 applicants 45 VM challenge 15 final round 2 offers
42. 2017 so far 160 applicants 45 VM challenge 15 final round 2 offers 2 hires
43. The odds are against us
44. 1. The problem 2. A solution
45. Where else can we find SREs?
47. Internal hiring is a thing
48. Some of your devs would love the role
49. Hi
50. How do you do it?
51. 3 parts
52. Find
53. Find Show
54. Find Show Mentor
55. Find Show Mentor
56. 3main signals
57. They jump at tricky problems
59. They peel back the stack
60. They peel back the stack Proxy App Database OS
61. They show empathy when things break
62. GoCardless Slack excerpt
63. Real talk: People learn things
64. Find Show Mentor
65. Find Show Mentor
66. Build an open operational culture
67. GoCardless post-mortem excerpt
68. GoCardless Slack excerpt
69. “The weird team in the corner”
70. Projects as well as ops
71. 20 to 50%
72. GoCardless project scoping excerpt
73. “The weird team in the corner”
74. The public stuff helps
75. https://gocardless.com/blog/tagged/site-reliability-engineering
76. It’s for your coworkers too
77. Take the sting out of the pager
78. Don’t support a horror show
79. Post-mortem action items
80. Bump memory limit ↓ Add connection limiter
81. Don’t foster a hero culture
84. Pay your damn on-call
85. Find Show Mentor
86. Find Show Mentor
87. Part IV: Management
88. Disaster simulation
89. https://github.com/gocardless/our-postgresql-setup
90. Disaster simulation Reverse engineering
91. They peel back the stack
92. Disaster simulation Reverse engineering Pager shadowing
94. My favourite: guided tours
95. Databases Caches Queues Proxies Networking (L4, L7) DNS Operating systems Observability Provisioning Packaging & deployment
97. Value Tasks Task value Extremely scientific graph
98. Tasks Task value Learning value Extremely scientific graph Value
99. What they bring to you
101. So how’s it going?
102. 2017 so far 160 applicants 45 VM challenge 15 final round 2 offers 2 hires
103. Our team over time
104. Our team over time 8 people (former and current)
105. Our team over time 8 people (former and current) 3 joined GC as devs
106. Our team over time 8 people (former and current) 3 joined GC as devs 2 dev → infra elsewhere
107. Hi
108. IT FREAKIN’ WORKS
109. Hiring SREs may be literally impossible @ChrisSinjo
110. Hiring enough SREs may be literally impossible @ChrisSinjo
111. Coach some new ones
112. Mentoring people is awesome anyway
113. Thank you $❤ @ChrisSinjo @GoCardlessEng
114. We’re hiring $❤ @ChrisSinjo @GoCardlessEng
115. Questions? $❤ @ChrisSinjo @GoCardlessEng
116. Image credits • Pager - https://www.flickr.com/photos/s_w_ellis/3878337144/ • Seedling - https://www.flickr.com/photos/kmdoncaster/26122812592/ • Sparkling heart emoji - https://github.com/mozilla/fxemoji/blob/ 9f68ca9c5bc51521f9ffe284e00ba8b7308e2c41/svgs/people/u1F496- sparklingheart.svg • Rubik’s cubes - https://www.flickr.com/photos/le-topographe/4840728643/
117. Image credits • SRE Book - https://landing.google.com/sre/book.html • Tours start here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2210774000/ • Trying To Grow - https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/4423598916/