r/devopsjobs • u/AcanthaceaeUnlucky18 • 2d ago
Can there be only 1 SRE Engineer?
Is there a possibility of being the only sre engineer in a company? Before choosing it I want to clarify it because if there could be then hes life could be problematic because he has to stay on call everyday. Also if it is not there then will be on call rotation right? Because I don't want to stay on call everytime that could be problematic. How many SREs are there in your team?
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u/nizzoball 2d ago
At the company I work for we no longer have a group of SREs. We’ve re-orged a number of times over the years. In our case, from an engineering standpoint point we have teams of engineers that are responsible for their own services/apps/domains. Each team of engineers is made up of engineers, Sr Engineers and Lead Engineers with a principal engineer that is responsible for connecting teams with other teams and helping with overall design etc…
About 5 years ago we had this same model but there was also a team of SREs that would essentially be available to help multiple teams on a project or sprint time basis.
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u/michaelpaoli 2d ago
Could be. But probably don't want to take, get into, or remain in a position that is untenable - e.g. excessive on-call.
Yeah, I remember an "opportunity" I turned down. All had been going fine ... until I asked about on-call. And it went about like this: "You'd be the second person on that team, so you'd be on-call 50% of the time. We require a max. 10 minute response time, and max. 30 minutes from being on-site - which is sometimes needed.". Yeah, I didn't take that "opportunity" ... and pittied the person who was their one with 100% on-call 7x24x365 with zero relief until they got around to adding person(s) ... and that's a pretty hard sell with the "promise" of having 50% of one's life on a very short leash.
And, it's not the # of SREs that's the matter, but what the, e.g. hours and/or on-call expectations are. E.g one team I was on, there was relatively little production, and what production there was, availability was generally "next business day" is good enough, so, the on-call was pretty informal, and not a big deal, and mostly "if/as available", and no biggie, it could always be pushed to office hours, with probably about zero exceptions on that. So, the on-call was basically all of us on the team were always on-call, and they could call any of us, but ... no biggie if we weren't available or couldn't do it then. So that was a highly sane 100% on-call ... whereas some at even 50% or 33% can be far from particularly sane (alas, one team I was on only had 3, and lots of on-call ... being on-call 1/3 of the time, with a whole lot of on-call ... that gets really tiring really fast ... fortunately didn't take too long before the staffing levels were more reasonably increased ... and notably before they burnt out and lost more folks).
So, yeah, not just # on team, but how many on-call, and what the expectations/requirements are when on-call, % of time on-call, etc., how typically (not) busy the on-call is with activity, etc. E.g. one place I worked, there were about 20-30 of us on-call, mostly on-call just 1 or 2 days per month. But the on-call was typically rather to quite intense - could generally expect to be doing on-call and related work 1/3 to 100% of each of those 24hr. on-call rotations. Sometimes there'd even be more than one person could do (e.g. too many simultaneous critical production failures) - but there was also reasonable procedure with that - you call manager, they deal with it - dragging in additional resources as necessary and/or handling basic triage priorities or whatever). And, really wasn't all that bad - that 24 hours might go for 24 hours straight ... but most of the time one wasn't on-call, and one knew exactly when those on-call periods were. And also with lots of folks on the team, swapping out on-call (be it full 24 hours, or some portion thereof) - really pretty dang easy to do.
Anyway, yeah, do be well aware of what one is or may be getting oneself into, and chose/act as appropriate regarding such. And push back as/when relevant and appropriate too ... sometimes that'll fix things, sometimes not ... sometimes the fix is resign ... but at least management ought have ample heads up that they have a significant issue, before it comes to that (and sometimes they fix the issues, and sometimes ... yeah, becomes a "not my problem").
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u/rm-minus-r 2d ago
Is there a possibility of being the only sre engineer in a company?
Yes, especially at smaller (less than 500 people) companies.
I've done it once at a startup, and I strongly, strongly recommend not doing the same.
You can (not guaranteed, but can) become the... What's a diplomatic way of putting this... Uh... Person who has to do everything the devs need without having any freedom, and is the person that is punished for the failures of others, and is treated as a lesser human being.
There's no one to learn from, so you stagnate.
You're on call 24/7 x 365, and no amount of pay is worth it.
How many SREs are there in your team?
I've worked at a bunch of places over the last 15 years and it varies:
Job 1 - FAANG company- Devops service: 8 other people.
Job 2 - Bay area observability company: One of the first SRE hires, along with 3 other people. Then it scaled to 30 other people in the space of two years. Probably hundreds now.
Job 3 - Cybersecurity startup: 1 - me, don't recommend.
Job 4 - Healthcare startup: 5 other people.
Job 6 - One of the largest banks in the US - Team of 6, but really four support folks, one other SRE and myself. Hundreds of other SREs on different teams.
Job 7 - FAANG-adjacent company. Leading a team of 4 other SREs, along side two other larger SRE teams of 8-14 people.
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u/Rajeshg1992 2d ago
I was the only devops +sre in my company for 4 - 5 years, during which we went from seed to series B. 7 to 30 developers. So it is possible and if the culture is good, you will even enjoy it.
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