Favorite Parts of Being a Site Reliability Manager at Google
David, a Site Reliability Manager at Google, finds immense satisfaction in mentoring junior engineers, fostering their growth and enabling them to achieve "more ideal selves as a software engineer faster than" David did. The unique, planetary scale of Google Cloud's infrastructure also captivates him, offering the chance to solve complex, geographically diverse problems like "routing traffic around" international issues or addressing Europe-specific software failures.
Leadership Development, Global Networking, Large-Scale Systems, Mentorship, Problem Solving
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. Helping junior engineers develop their skills and reach their full potential as software engineers
2. Working on a planetary-scale network with custom infrastructure at Google Cloud
3. Solving complex, large-scale problems related to global network routing and traffic management
Transcript
What do you enjoy most about being in your current role?
I'll answer that two ways. From the management side, it's no question. It's helping people develop, especially when someone is fresh out of school or new to the career and didn't go through a traditional educational path.
When they start to develop, and then they look at you and say, "I didn't even know I could do that," it's an amazing feeling. It's one of those things that keeps me on the management track, knowing I can help people develop into their ideal selves as software engineers faster than I did.
I didn't have a lot of great managers or managers who understood technology when I was coming out. I'd rather the next generation of programmers all be better than I am because they got better guidance early on. So that's one major part.
I also enjoy working at Google Cloud because it is a crazy, bespoke, planetary-scale network with completely custom everything. We are, I guess, for better or for worse, a tech island. There aren't many places you can go and say, "Today I'm going to be looking at the Asian continent's networking."
Or, "What's going on today? Oh, there are problems between Korea and Japan, so we're going to be routing traffic differently." Or, "A software thing started in Europe and it's broken specifically in Europe, so we better not push to Europe."
Those sorts of things, and the way we think about that, are hard to get. It's difficult to work with and requires a lot of bureaucracy, frankly. But it's also really rewarding when it works.