My Life as a Solo SRE

Website Maintenance Alert

Due to scheduled maintenance, the USENIX website may not be available on Monday, March 17, from 10:00 am–6:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7). We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

If you would like to register for NSDI '25, SREcon25 Americas, or PEPR '25, please complete your registration before or after this time period.

Wednesday, 2 October, 2019 - 15:0015:30

Brian Murphy, G-Research

Abstract: 

2015 was the worst year of my professional career. Between botched fail forward releases, major customer impacting incidents and weakly supported features, I was being worn down. And then in 2016, I helped introduce the organisation to SRE culture. I became the first SRE and helped change the engineering organisation. Over the next few months and years, I championed SLIs, drove down MTTA/MTTR and improved release cadence. In this talk, you will hear my tails of woe, but I will leave you with advice and tips on how to make your life and your organisation better.

Brian Murphy, G-Research

Brian Murphy is an SRE by nature and a manager by training. He currently works for G-Research where he built and leads an SRE team. Previously, he was an SRE Manager for a startup that was bought by Cisco. He currently lives with his wife, son and sassy dog in West London. His superpower is the ability to find the best coffee and vegan food in any city.

Open Access Media

USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.

BibTeX

Presentation Video