I had a conversation at Sports Page a while back with one of the SWEs I supported and a new hire that he’d he’d taken under his wing.
Old Hand to FNG “This is Cliff. He’s an SRE. SREs are the Most Powerful!”:
FNG (eyes wide as saucers) “Ohhhhhhhh!”:
It was kind of funny at the time - a little embarrassing, and admittedly a little flattering. I’ve thought about it quite a bit since then - about this idea that Engineers in general (and SREs, in particular) are some kind of techno-wizards with Special Powers. The more I think about it the more I think it’s actually pretty harmful. I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s explore some of the possible origins of this perception:
SREs have a very particular set of skills. I won’t deny that I have had the opportunity to work alongside some intimidatingly-talented engineers. Even after 6+ years at LinkedIn I’m sometimes still blown away that I can call these folks my peers. SREs have root. There are, in fact, some things SREs can do that other folks cannot. SREs tend to be given “the keys to the kingdom” - sudo /root access, lix approval permissions, etc. Despite this distinction being policy-based and not capability-/talent-based, I feel like it’s a contributing factor. SREs have beards. This one is obviously tongue-in-cheek - I am an SRE and I do not have a beard - but anecdotally I’d say SREs have a higher likelihood of being bearded than, say, accountants…and a much higher likelihood of having a wizard-like beard. Appearances can be deceiving, but…well…if you walk into a room looking like Gandalf people are going to form a certain kind of opinion.
Okay…so what’s the big deal? I myself admitted to feeling flattered, what’s wrong with a little flattery? Why might this be a bad thing?
Magnification of impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome already runs rampant in the tech industry. Elevating engineering roles to god-like status can enhance the effects of feeling “like a hack”. Learned helplessness. Having the perception that SREs are the only ones who can perform a particular class of tasks (deployments, for example) actually runs directly counter to a core part of the SRE mission - specifically, empowering engineers to make changes to the site as efficiently (and safely!) as possible. “I didn’t know/nobody told me I could do that” is one thing, but in the worst case this is effectively a regression to the Bad Old Days of silos and specialized roles; Developers wrote the code, “Ops” was expected to run it, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Ugh. Actively inhibits diversity. This is the single worst effect of the perception of engineer-as-superhuman. “Meritocracy” be damned - if you elevate a particular role to a position of higher status then you will end up with a system in which “people like them are capable of things like that”, and by extension “I am not like them, and therefore I am not capable.”
I have a friend who I know would make an excellent SRE. She has even gone so far as hinting at wanting to become one “…but I don’t have a Computer Science degree.” Even ignoring the fact that I know plenty of SREs who don’t have degrees in CS - or who don’t have a college degree at all, or who gasp have a Liberal Arts degree! - I feel a certain subtext here. This isn’t about “I haven’t had the proper training”; it’s about “I am not smart/good/talented enough.”
Fuck that.
Look, I’ve seen dudes do things with awk that took my breath away. And that’s awesome! That said, a hiring process that selected exclusively for being proficient in awk would be awful. (If you’re not convinced that awk-focused hiring would be awful then we need to talk - please, reach out, and we’ll find you some help.) Taking it a step further, if there were a perception that “only people who grok awk need apply” that would be even worse. Extending this to the worst possible case: a perception that “there is a certain class of person - the Awk-Grokker - and I am not in that class ”.
The above might be a bit silly as dystopian analogies go, but I suspect it’s not far off the mark in some ways. Anyhow, if you take nothing else away from this post I hope it is the following: that engineers - SREs - are people. Not some “special class”, but people.