People that inspire
We want to finalize this chapter by pointing out other SREs that have inspired us and have been encouraging the wider community. We couldn’t even think about starting this book without the work of the parents of site reliability engineering at Google. We are immensely grateful to them. Site reliability engineering would probably not exist outside Google if they had chosen not to share their thoughts, principles, techniques, and practices through the site reliability engineering foundation books. They are mandatory reading for anyone following this career path. If you haven’t read them yet, please check out Google’s site reliability engineering books at this site: https://sre.google/books/.
We want to recognize a few other rockstar SREs that have really made a difference in our professional lives as individuals. They are trailblazers of site reliability engineering outside Google.
Jeremy’s recognition – Paul Tyma, former CTO, LendingTree
In technology, finding your way can be difficult. The constant struggle of being an SRE leads us into discussions of what went wrong; often, we have to say what some don’t want to hear – that a negative thing happened due to what a person or team did or didn’t do. We are, in fact, often the bearers of bad news. Paul opened the door for me to become an SRE, and we drove a great reliability revolution together. Most importantly, he taught me that there is a balance to all things, and we have a choice in that balance. And what we often consider a responsibility or duty can have its limits.
Rod’s recognition – Ingo Averdunk, Distinguished Engineer, IBM, and Gene Brown, Distinguished Engineer, Kyndryl
Ingo and Gene triggered a small revolution inside IBM by designing and deploying site reliability engineering principles, practices, professions, and methodologies to its organizations across the globe. They first transformed many internal teams to adopt such extraordinary tenets, then later, they helped external customers in doing the same. Of course, they didn’t accomplish this alone, but they were (and are) paramount examples of technical executive leadership. They shaped the site reliability engineering profession from within IBM, which later spread to Kyndryl after its spin-off.
