Addenda to an earlier review - SRE X Employee Review

Working in SRE has some serious issues. There is an embedded approach -- so one gets one's work assignments and performance assessments from an engineering organization, but promotion/compensation decisions are made by SRE management. It depends on how engaged the SRE management is with the SRE, and some SRE managers are extremely disengaged, or are willing to accept the word of the engineering manager. The engineering manager does not have any incentive to promote the work of the SRE, particularly when the work is a joint project with engineering. Similarly, engineering managers will be more focused on the work of their direct reports, and rightly so. This makes the entire SRE employee review process capricious. Strong SREs are more readily lost through bad management, and SRE reviews (conducted entirely within SRE management structure) are more prone to second hand information and favoritism.