
Ask HN: SRE, former fullstack, how to move to a Google scale job? - almostsre
I used to do Python&#x2F;Django&#x2F;JS lib of choice. Now work as an SRE and use ansible, etc for automation and getting into setting up monitoring and self-healing systems.
How do I get noticed by Facebook or Google or other companies with that kind of scale? Is the interview process the same with a whole bunch of algorithms and optimizing time complexity on finding string palindromes, etc? (slightly tongue in cheek, I know).<p>I&#x27;m not a unix or networking expert (yet) but I can learn really quick given time (as evidenced by my work in the new role) and have been working in a systems role for almost a year.<p>Have total 5years of experience in startup and enterprise roles.<p>The trouble is really - I am not incredibly experienced in the new role (though I&#x27;m doing well at it), and I am genuinely more passionate about internal tools than writing features customer facing applications.
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snowcrshd
I myself am currently going through an interview process for an SRE position
at one of those companies.

From what I've seen/read while preparing for this, algorithms knowledge is not
__as crucial __as for a software engineer role. That said, I think you still
should know how to handle basic data structures (binary [search] tree, hash
maps, AVL or Red Black trees, etc) and graph traversal algorithms.

Unless you are specifically interested in working with networking related
stuff, I wouldn't focus too much on this.

I believe it would be a better use of your time to study things like:

    
    
      - File systems
      - Signals
      - System calls
      - Processes
      - Performance analysis: CPU, memory, disk, etc
    

Get familiar with tools like vmstat, strace, etc.

As for prep materials:

    
    
      - Read Google's SRE book [1]: this is useful to get a feel of how a big company like google handles its infrastructure.
      - Grab Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment and plow through it as much as you can [2]. *Do the exercises*.
      - Read at least the CPU, disk and memory parts of Systems  Performance by Brendan Gregg [3]
    

I strongly recommend Brendan Gregg's by due to the troubleshooting sections. I
find them very useful.

Also note that it is not that easy to get an interview just by sending your
résumé to their websites. I tried this and never got a response. (I think this
is to be expected, due to the sheer volume of applications these companies
receive).

Then a friend of mine referred me and I got to participate in the interview
process. Having a referral will make the task of getting an interview much
easier.

    
    
      - [1]: https://landing.google.com/sre/interview/ben-treynor.html
      - [2]: http://www.brendangregg.com/sysperfbook.html
      - [3]: http://www.apuebook.com/apue3e.html
    

EDIT: Added comment about getting an interview.

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merlinsbrain
If you ever look back here, thanks. I was a little disappointed that no one
else had answered, but this is super helpful :)

