97 Things Every SRE Should Know

Chapter 18. Dear Future Team

Frances Rees

Google

Don’t get too excited, I’m not looking to move yet, but it’s fun to imagine what team #4 will be like. There are, of course, the important questions: What do you work on? How big is the team? Who are the other teams you work with? And then there are the questions that go beyond the formal interviews and role descriptions.

Here’s what I hope is true.

I hope you eat lunch together. Maybe not every day, but I hope you can talk to each other outside of meetings. I hope you can introduce me to all the teams nearby and point out the one to ask about this tool, that kind of bug, or the other shared service.

I hope you ask lots of questions. Questions you feel a little awkward about asking because you think they might be dumb or obvious. Questions about how things work, why things are the way they are, why you do things the way you do, what value you’re trying to add with a project. Questions you’re not even sure have an answer.

I hope you love telling stories as much as I do. Stories of achievements, hard-learned lessons, or just funny things you’ve discovered. I believe that it’s important to remember and preserve the tales of the team, to feel connected to what happened before you joined the team and feel that you can build on it.

My first team prided ourselves on drawing a map of Maps for anyone who would listen, with every funny story ...