Career Path Of A Site Reliability Engineer At Google
David's career journey, beginning with post-college struggles including "odd jobs" and temp work, led to open-source contributions and roles at Lockheed Martin, startups like Powerset (a "credible competitor to Google"), and eventually Bing. This winding path, involving founding a FinTech company and recognizing gaps in their leadership skills, ultimately culminated in a Site Reliability Manager position at Google, driven by a desire to work on "a system that was planetary scale."
Overcoming Challenges, Career Development, Technology, Leadership, Resilience
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
David Fayram
Site Reliability Manager
University of California, Santa Barbara
None
Computer Science
Energy & Utilities, Technology, Advertising, Communications & Marketing
Cyber Security and IT
Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School, LGBTQ
Video Highlights
1. David's career path highlights a combination of diverse experiences, including working at startups and large companies like Google. He emphasizes the importance of practical experience in software development, highlighting how his experience working on real-world projects helped him develop valuable skills. His entrepreneurial journey, starting his own FinTech company, showcases his ambition and leadership skills development. His willingness to take risks and pursue his passions in open-source contributions and various programming languages also played a key role in his career trajectory.
2. David's journey demonstrates the importance of adaptability in the tech industry. Despite facing early career challenges such as the 2002-2003 tech crash, he persevered by taking on various jobs and engaging in open-source projects, gradually building valuable skills and experience. His experiences at different companies, from startups to large corporations, show how he continuously learned and adapted to various work environments and team structures. This emphasizes the value of flexibility and continuous learning in a rapidly evolving field.
3. The interview showcases the importance of networking and mentorship. David's early work in open source and his ability to network helped him secure opportunities at Lockheed Martin and later with startups and eventually Google. His experiences working with various teams and mentors, along with his reflections on the importance of apprenticeship, highlight the role of collaboration and learning from others in career progression. This is especially crucial for students aspiring for a career in the tech industry.
Transcript
Could you walk me through your career path, starting with your experiences in college? Any internships or jobs you had before your current role?
Sure. I graduated right in the aftermath of the tech crash, around 2002, 2003, so it was really bad. I lived out of a friend's borrowed car and did odd jobs to earn enough money to eat. I had to be very frugal, sometimes only affording one big meal a day.
I helped install self-checkout systems at Home Depot and worked as a temp at various firms that valued my fast typing speed. It was a pretty tough start. Eventually, I did some open-source work, which was still relatively new back then. A subcontractor for Lockheed Martin got me in touch with them.
So, I ended up working on the space range modernization program at Vandenberg Air Force Base for a few years. It was a pretty miserable gig. I was the youngest person on the team by about 25 years, but working with real NASA scientists was cool.
I knew I couldn't stay there, though, as there wasn't much opportunity and the project was slated to end. I ended up doing a bunch of Ruby work, which was my passion in college. I really loved the Ruby language when it was hip to love languages.
This pushed me into the startup circuit because I did open-source work on natural language parsing. I worked on natural language processing for the company that eventually became Apple's Ping, Powerset, which was a modestly famous company at the time. It was a credible competitor to Google that Microsoft eventually bought. So, I worked on Bing for a little bit before I left there.
I learned a lot in that role. It made me realize how important apprenticeships are in the software world. It's hard to learn practical skills solely from academia on how to ship software.
I got recruited to some more startups and worked on a few of them. I turned down offers from Meta and Square to go work for Simple, which was known as Bank Simple. I worked at CrowdFlower; its founders later went on to do Weights & Biases.
I founded my own company in FinTech, as I saw a niche there. It was an interesting experience, but I can't recommend working in FinTech. Being a founder was fascinating, though. I learned a lot and realized I had leadership gaps to work on.
I ended up landing at Google, right before and through the pandemic, because I really wanted to work on a system that was planetary scale. That is what I do for Google as a traffic SRE.