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School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

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Re: School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

#41

Post by chaps »

RMPR wrote: post #19
jedberg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably at least get a phone interview if you did...

I don't really understand, how going through this will get you a phone interview? I mean, it doesn't change anything on your resume... Source: I'm a new grad, I went through almost all this, but my application wasn't shortlisted. Not a native speaker, so maybe I just don't understand what you're saying.

It's good with these sorts of things to simply get an understanding of the terminology used by these teams. Going through a guide like this won't get you 100% of the way, but it'll let you have conversations with someone over the phone.

IME, SRE roles are jack of all trades position, so you're not necessarily expected to be an expert in any one thing, which makes it easier to learn many things at the surface level, instead of learning a few things in depth. Which practically means that you will learn a lot on the job. This is especially true, since you're expected to learn some technology that's only seen internal to the company. So, showing they you have the ability to learn can perceived as much more important than specific knowledge.

Re: School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

#42

Post by markus_zhang »

sushid wrote: post #34
markus_zhang wrote: post #23

I'm not sure, but maybe this is only for internal transfers? I mean this is obviously less difficult than the interviews of the big ones, or maybe Linkedin doesn't have difficult interviews?

Where are people getting that this is their interview process (or a prep book of some sort)? This afaik from the intro page is that they use this for onboarding. It’s to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

No, what I meant is, since the interview is more difficult than this onboarding doc (I could be wrong though, so if I'm wrong the whole thing doesn't stand), why did they bother to introduce this onboarding doc to anyone who already familiar with each part of it?

Re: School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

#44

Post by jonfromsf »

arcturus17 wrote: post #21
dzonga wrote: post #12

with cloud being the talk of the industry these days. how pervasive are SRE roles. I would wager a good system admin | SRE can save a company thousands if they provisioned their own hardware i.e colo instead of cloud instances etc

They could also cost the company ludicrous amounts if they built a Frankenstein at the software layer which made a mess of operations, security or performance. It’s unlikely that a “good” sysadmin / SRE, or even a team of them, could efficiently replicate the versatility and reliability offered by cloud services.

Thats true. But you don't need that versatility or reliability a lot of the time. For a bog-standard webapp that talks to a database, gets decent traffic, and is growing at a reasonable pace (say doubling every year), dedicated hosting or colo will save you a LOT of money.

Re: School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

#46

Post by TheHypnotist »

pm90 wrote: post #35
jedberg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My implication is that you either somehow indicate on your resume that you've done all this work, or better yet, take up a small project that lets you apply some of the skills. As a hiring manager there is no way to know you've done this unless you somehow demonstrate it.

Classic software chicken and egg problem.

It's an amazing phenomenon. In order to get industry experience using a tool/skillset you need to be part of that industry using that tool/skillset. It's becoming more apparent to me that in order to pivot in IT, you need to do something (ie a project) on your own time or just lie.

Re: School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

#48

Post by nojito »

yellow_pen wrote: post #45

a quick search for LinkedIn SRE jobs returns: - Senior SREs - Staff SREs - Manager, SRE - SRE Intern assuming senior, staff and manager roles would not accept non-traditional candidates...so this applies to interns?

There are Senior/Staff SREs with non-traditional backgrounds at Linkedin

Re: School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

#49

Post by igotroot »

As a non-developer whose code would probably make your average SRE's brain implode, how competent would this 'course' make me?

I started my IT career 2 years ago and my programming isn't that strong. I got pinged for a SRE job recently (my background so far is very much Linux based so I must have matched some filter) but I'm not strong in development, k8s (or even containers), or all of the other cool stuff I see on HN. I know I can lab stuff out, but that's not anywhere close to doing it live.

I don't want to be a SRE for Google, but I'd like to learn some more on the reliability side of my world and bring things like Git, Puppet, System design, etc and not be left behind in this wave that's approaching. My organization isn't too involved in the cloud, so a lot of upcoming tech seems out of reach.

Re: School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads

#50

Post by pm90 »

TheHypnotist wrote: post #46
pm90 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic software chicken and egg problem.

It's an amazing phenomenon. In order to get industry experience using a tool/skillset you need to be part of that industry using that tool/skillset. It's becoming more apparent to me that in order to pivot in IT, you need to do something (ie a project) on your own time or just lie.

Well the part that companies don’t say out loud is that college recruitment is the source of most of their new grads. Which colleges becomes a function of alums with influence in the company.
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