What I learnt from an SRE secondment during lockdown!
An insight, into my insights, at Glasswall SRE.
Being in SRE helped me see the reasoning behind the day to day engineering activities, on a technical level and personal. Not preaching to the choir or explaining concepts but rather explaining my clarity of thought and understanding why I was working the way I was.
Logs mean something
- Logs can help reduce code logic and gain business intelligence.
- The trade-off between usefulness and volume.
- When consumed and analysed can help with debugging in production.
Keep up to date with technology
- Even something as simple as following more tech companies on LinkedIn.
- Reading more articles.
- Propose and learn about new technology.
Testing is a time saver
- Removes junior mistakes.
- Mocking was a big revelation, Skip any long processes to test a specific area, Test every possibility from a mocked response.
- Creates even more of a case to pass your PR and easier to process PR’s as a reviewer.
Pipelines
- Speed up a process that you have to do often.
- Can’t run away from coding standards when it’s in the pipeline.
- Saves time not just for yourself, but reviewers too.
Automate everything
- Like literally everything. Don’t even make yourself have to check a box. Don’t create excuses, create automation. If it is on your computer screen, it can be done.
- Playbooks.
Documentation
- Documentation is not for nothing, document code so that it could even save time reading code. Benefit your future self and others.
- The fact my secondment at SRE would end at some point in time in months, allowed me to finally understand I should document my code and repositories.
- README.md
Python
I was okay with Python when I began, I could work and get on with it. Thanks to the SRE team, I have upscaled my Python with the use of everything mentioned above, including the power of Concurrency, Packaging, Mocking and more. For that particular language against any other, I would feel confident in any project to use it well.
Open Source Repositories to show employers
Mmmmm. More things to put on my CV. Mmmmm.
More SRE
- Monitoring / Metrics / Dashboards
- SLO / SLA
- Kubernetes / Helm / Keda
- What it takes to make a production software and repository
- Incident Response / Management
- More cloud experience and learnings
- IaC
Topics still to be discovered
- Networking
- Security
- Operating Systems
- More Kubernetes
- So much more I probably don’t know about yet…
Now to a more personal level
Imposter Syndrome
Maybe it’s apart of my person, but I feel imposter syndrome is real. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that can’t be overcome. To me, it means to stay on top of it and prove my worth because I know I probably shouldn’t be here so prove your worth.
Because of this, I felt the need to spend time outside to learn, so I chose to do an AWS course on Linux Academy outside of work hours and within 3 days I consumed 24 hours of content and passed the certification. (Also realised maybe certifications are not as important as I previously thought.)
Be entrepreneurial, take initiative
Not from SRE but on a spiritual journey during a back seat passenger drive into London with some Strongbow Dark Fruits. It gave me the chance to see physically the world is changing at a much faster rate because of COVID. (London looked bigger over 2 cans of dark fruits as well)
Speak Out
I would tend to keep thoughts to myself and not speak out. Now I find myself perhaps saying too much. I only have good intentions. I realise using my voice won’t have negative repercussions but more further yourself and others, because if thoughts remain thoughts then transparency cannot happen.
Don’t let people walk over you
Yes, I’m happy to help anyone who asks, I like to help if I were in the same situation of asking for help. The title of junior doesn’t mean you can’t help or that you don’t have the knowledge and does not mean you should be treated as a junior and with a lack of respect. We all have value in our individual ways.
Everyone is my role model
This has always been my life motto. To learn a lesson from everyone regardless of position. SRE gave me the chance to learn from people I haven’t interacted with before in the company. The depth of knowledge the team has is incredible and really is a testament to what makes the SRE team the gold standard.
The core team has taught me so much already and joining SRE has taught me so much directly and indirectly. Every member has great qualities and has given me aspiration and ambition.
Life After SRE
SRE has given me another perspective of what another team feels like. Core had its own team struggles in the company and so has SRE.
No one knows me better than myself. The fact there is no clarity to what I want to do is my own personal problem and one I must overcome myself. Maybe not looking at it as a career plan but more of a life plan and fitting a career into it. A lead or manager can help but I think only by rough guidance, ultimately it is a personal challenge to create a life/career plan.
Options I have had before were for development, however, I know I can achieve greater and I don’t want a job but a career. I have ideas and a plan to achieve the goal I have set.
I have created a detailed plan but in summary:
Just like selling, there must be a gap in the market, and a way to fill that gap. In context, an issue in the company and how it can be resolved. Currently, I believe from my experience there are issues in the availability of Team Leads. Managing people is not an easy task and a lot of time is consumed through guidance, meetings and other daily tasks. My goal is to outline technical issues blamelessly, the company currently faces creating the need for Tech Leads.
Tech Lead is a person who is aware of quality, technologies, ensuring repositories can be worked on by everyone and creating consistency through them. With products in development production requirements/challenges needs to be acknowledged.
This would be a stepping stone in my full long term goal of developing into a Team Lead.
Big up the SRE.
