Laura Nolan, Stanza
The role of SREs and other software operators has moved from making direct changes to running systems and configurations towards building tools and control planes that actually run our systems, or reusing automation systems built by others.
We haven't talked too much about this as a field, but it is a profound shift in the nature of our work. Now we need two skillsets: our traditional software and systems skills that we use to plan work and react to anomalies; plus a newer skillset that focuses on building and managing automated systems that make the overall system - software and humans - more reliable.
We are not yet good at build automation to be a good team player. This talk explores the problems in this domain and some ways that we can make progress.
Laura Nolan, Stanza
Laura Nolan is a software engineer and SRE. She has contributed to several books on SRE, such as the Site Reliability Engineering book, Seeking SRE, and 97 Things Every SRE Should Know. Laura is a Principal Engineer at Stanza, where she is building software to help humans understand and control their production systems. Laura is a member of the USENIX board of directors and a long-time SREcon volunteer. She lives in rural Ireland in a small village full of medieval ruins.
author = {Laura Nolan},
title = {How to Make Your Automation a Better Team Player},
year = {2023},
address = {Dublin},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = oct
}
