#67 Why the SRE Book Fails Most Orgs — Lessons from a Google Veteran
From Reliability Enablers by Ash Patel & Sebastian Vietz
July 15, 2025 · 31 min
About this episode
In this episode, Ash and Sebastian discuss the pitfalls of following the SRE book with Google veteran Dave O’Connor.
A new or growing SRE team. A copy of the book. A company that says it cares about reliability. What happens next? Usually… not much. In this episode, I sit down with Dave O’Connor , a 16-year Google SRE veteran , to talk about what happens when organizations cargo-cult reliability practices without understanding the context they were born in. You might know him for his self-deprecating wit and legendary USENIX blurb about being “complicit in the development of the SRE function.” This one’s a treat — less “here’s a shiny new tool” and more “here’s what reliability actually looks like when you’ve seen it all.” ✨ No vendor plugs from Dave at all, just a good old-fashioned chat about what works and what doesn’t. Here’s what we dive into: * The adoption trap : Why SRE efforts often fail before they begin—especially when new hires care more about reliability than the org ever intended. * The SRE book dilemma : Dave’s take on why following the SRE book chapter-by-chapter is a trap for most companies (and what to do instead). * The cost of “caring too much” : How engineers burn out trying to force reliability into places it was never funded to live. * You build it, you run it (but should…
People in this episode
Hosts: Ash Patel, Sebastian Vietz
Guest: Dave O’Connor
Topics covered
- SRE practices
- organizational reliability
- engineering burnout
- incident command
- software development
Keywords
- SRE
- reliability
- engineering
- burnout
- incident management
- software development
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Google
Books & works: SRE book
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