The Smallest Possible SRE Team
summary
Argues a single-person SRE can be effective by directing data, tools, and communication toward teams and amplifying impact with automation and docs. Runs weekly post-incident reviews and quarterly game days, teaches fire drills so dev teams become self-sufficient, and records time-to-detect/recover and blast radius to prioritize work. Builds three serverless tools on AWS: Erebus chaos engine (SSM-driven instance chaos), Blacklight auditing (event-driven Lambda rules), and Oath Keeper SLO tool (CloudWatch/New Relic queries); initial rotations convert 100% to hires.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00The role of SRE
- 4:07Team structure models
- 8:01Defining enabling teams
- 10:42Operating with small teams
- 14:14Reviews and drills
- 18:59Maturity and prioritization
- 23:37Pragmatic tool building
- 26:48Specific serverless tools
- 30:17Learning and chaos
- 34:46Scaling and documentation
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