I'm an SRE with three years of experience in Java, Python, Jenkins, and Elastic Stack. Lately, I've run into some challenging situations at my company—there are several critical issues in our production system that I can't resolve because of restrictive access policies. When I reach out to the Level 3 (L3) developers for help, they usually respond with, "Is it broken?" I explain that while it's not broken, it's unstable and could lead to problems, especially with special characters coming from the compliance team. Despite my pleas, they refuse to take action unless something catastrophic happens. I understand that they're busy with adding features and planning, but it's frustrating to watch our project scale in a way that goes against good programming practices, with problems like unnecessary duplicated code and a lack of CI/CD processes. It feels like a ticking time bomb when the only team capable of fixing production issues isn't willing to step up until it's too late. Any tips on how to effectively convince backend developers to tackle these SRE issues without needing a crisis first? By the way, I'm leaving this company soon, so I'd appreciate some advice before I start my next role as an SRE.
4 Answers
You should have a discussion with your manager and get them to talk to the dev managers. Sometimes, these issues need management backing to get resolved. I used to be the one called at 2 am when problems arose, and I’d ensure our IT leadership understood the urgency. Once management is involved, dev teams can be made to understand the priorities better. It might be uncomfortable at first, but over time, you'll see fewer issues as processes improve.
Stop framing these issues as 'their problems' and instead emphasize that it's a shared responsibility. Make sure they understand the end-user's perspective—clients don't care about internal silos. Also, organizing joint knowledge-sharing sessions could help them see things from your side. They need to realize we're all in this together!
I hear you—it’s tough when they don’t feel the impact of the issues. Staying proactive is key, but culture change takes time.
One way to get their attention is to start documenting all the issues clearly. Then, escalate this to your supervisor if necessary. If that still doesn't work, maybe consider speaking to their manager directly. Sometimes, getting higher-ups involved can help prioritize these problems.
I like the idea of escalating to their boss first. But if their manager doesn’t even understand what SRE is, that might lead to more frustration.
Totally agree with escalating internally! Sometimes management needs to step in to push priorities.
Yeah, I've been in similar situations before. Honestly, it sometimes feels like management doesn't want a stable project—they just want something that needs constant maintenance to justify their budget. It might be worth your time to invest in your own projects instead of trying to fix theirs.
I wish it was that straightforward! I used to handle a lot of SRE work for them, but recent policy changes hampered that. I even set up a knowledge session, but their mindset is still, 'If it ain't broke, don’t fix it.' I'm left managing all the recovery work and false alarms.