SRE is a difficult role because you need someone with the mindset of a sysadmin and the skills of a programmer. So Google (at least used to) will hire one and hope to find the other half. As a result a large fraction of people hired into the position are not a fit. And Google had no mechanism to identify and rectify this common problem.
I am a programmer. I tend to dive into things in depth and context switching is unusually hard for me. A sysadmin needs to be able to operate on relatively limited knowledge and rapid context switching is par for the course. I was therefore a poor fit in that role.
After I left I was shocked at how many people I met who had known someone else whose story matched mine pretty closely. I would hope that Google has solved this organizational problem since. But rumor from those I know that are still there indicate that things have gotten worse over time, not better, so I don't think that it has.
However it was quite educational. I wish things had worked out differently but I definitely learned a lot that has served me well since.
I think it's tough hiring for an SRE role. Much tougher than a programming role. Although in Google's SRE book, they say the interview bar is lower than for their software engineers. Odd!
You're looking for the sort of person that could setup a startup from the data center up. On top of that, they need to be good coders so they can automate everything, and also understand the applications running on the things they build. It's generally a much more in-the-trenches job - relying on limited information, and much harder to test things in isolation since there are so many moving parts, and things you can't change or automate easily (network vendor appliances, and so on).
I am a programmer. I tend to dive into things in depth and context switching is unusually hard for me. A sysadmin needs to be able to operate on relatively limited knowledge and rapid context switching is par for the course. I was therefore a poor fit in that role.
After I left I was shocked at how many people I met who had known someone else whose story matched mine pretty closely. I would hope that Google has solved this organizational problem since. But rumor from those I know that are still there indicate that things have gotten worse over time, not better, so I don't think that it has.
However it was quite educational. I wish things had worked out differently but I definitely learned a lot that has served me well since.