The Mechanic: Interview with a Site Reliability Engineer and SDET

Today I'm interviewing one of my mentors (and an occasional coworker), Brian! He's a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET), former Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), former platform engineer, sysadmin, Java developer, and full-time motorcycle and car restoration/experimentation mechanic.
00:00 Intro
01:30 Brian's Background
10:00 Brian's tech philosophy
11:35 We're All Tech Mechanics
13:38 Impostor Syndrome
16:00 Abstraction is a two-edged sword
17:25 XKCD reference
17:38 Understand the Abstractions
18:45 Curiosity and Enthusiasm as Strengths
19:51 How to start in tech from scratch
24:15 Theory vs Practical Application
26:10 Current favorite tech work
28:35 All devops branding is BS
31:30 Networking for real
34:44 Advantages of middle-aged white dudes
36:30 Reach out and help good people
37:48 Skills people neglect
43:25 Future predictions for the tech world
49:01 Worse is better
51:03 Undifferentiated heavy lifting
Linode Referral Link (you get $100 credit when signing up): www.linode.com/tutoriallinux
Step-by-step project-based Linux course for beginners: www.udemy.com/course/hands-on...
Free Linux Sysadmin Course Playlist: • The Linux Basics Cours...
Patreon: / tutorialinux
Official Site & e-mail list: tutorialinux.com/
Twitter: / tutorialinux
Facebook: / tutorialinux
Podcast: kernelpanicpodcast.com

[@tutoriaLinux]

Linode Referral Link (you get $100 credit when signing up): www.linode.com/tutoriallinux
Step-by-step project-based Linux course for beginners: www.udemy.com/course/hands-on-linux-self-hosted-wordpress-for-linux-beginners/?referralCode=19C0A7DEE2FD53C9C09D

[@jahjay6239]

Please keep these interviews coming, tuning in from Jamaica!

[@tutoriaLinux]

Got a few more coming over the next few weeks!

[@classless88]

These interview videos are fantastic. Greatly appreciate the insight being shared!

[@hinerron]

I really appreciate these interviews. Thanks for taking the time! I've been interviewing for DevOps/CloudOps positions lately (entry level with minimal immediate experience) and these conversations have really helped me be more conversational. You both are great at organizing the thoughts and concepts of what makes for a successful DevOps mindset.

[@rushibutley8477]

Well this video is so on point, k8s thing you talk about is exactly my thought while explaining to people there is no magic, when this cracks up it’s crazy to debug, also it’s so hard to achieve things like pod design architecture in k8s cause Ingres or load balancers are not smart enough, to have dynamic service resource discovery and stuff. Even the last point dave makes about companies not seeing platform as delivering feature by providing compliance, this is most overlooked thing which i observed. It’s just 4 years for me in industry but am hardcore you can say infrastructure:devops:platform whatever you call it engineer, idk why it’s difficult for people to understand you can’t scale without solid infrastructure, if you can’t scale in turn that means you’re loosing on revenue, thankfully few companies gets it and slay in that space for others still devs are their favourite babies. This is could be very unpopular opinion but people who understand infrastructure or platform write such solid application code cause they know it’s gonna deploy, how it’s gonna scale, what’s gonna be tech debt.
Looking for more such amazing talks :)
Edit : hush 😂 wow after commenting when i read it, i felt like my all feelings came out at once.

[@matzmr]

please do system design mock interview with SRE/DevOps

[@JivanPal]

(Protip: change the video title before changing visibility from unlisted to public. In my notifications, the original video title shows because TH-cam is dumb.)

[@tutoriaLinux]

Thanks - that’s totally my bad, just an oversight. :*-(

[@lesliekiszka8657]

"Did Leslie teach you nothing?!" I WILL HAUNT YOU BOTH FOREVER :-D