9 Years of Failure: How Racing Crappy Cars Made Me a Better SRE
summary
Nine years of 24 Hours of Lemons racing yields concrete SRE lessons: teams of 4–6 maintain $500 cars, survive ~half a dozen engine swaps and a center‑support bearing falling off while driving, and win by uptime not speed. Tool choices matter — a 1900 ft‑lb impact gun shrinks a 5–10 minute nut job to seconds. Observability is literal: oil pressure, temps, live telemetry and a cooking thermometer backup catch overheating. Simple hacks like zip ties and Gatorade catch cans are effective and durable.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:28What is 24 Hours of Lemons
- 1:22How is it similar to being an SRE
- 2:18Working Session
- 6:15Incident Management
- 8:50Project Management
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