Don't Follow Leaders or - All Models Are Wrong - and So Am I

Explore the impact and legacy of the SRE book in this 45-minute conference talk from SREcon21. Reflect on the book's influence on production engineering and SRE, examining both its positive contributions and potential shortcomings. Delve into the new working model required for the book's creation, criticisms it faced, and its lasting effects on the field. Analyze questionable assumptions, patterns that may need re-examination, and emerging challenges in reliability engineering. Consider the integration of safety cultures, ethics in SRE, and receive a call to action for addressing unresolved issues in the field.

THE ADVANCED COMPUTING SYSTEMS ASSOCIATION
Some background re: the SRE Book
Doing the book required a new model for working
Impact of SRE book
Criticisms of the book at the time
Legacy of the SRE Book
The value of reliability
The parable of the sticky users
The sparse hints we have
Questionable Assumptions
Homogenous independent requests good, two legs bad
A horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses
Error budget bankruptcy
Book originated patterns we could re-examine
How important should on- call be to SRE?
Integrating Safety Cultures
Ethics in SRE
Call to Action