Ah, and the SRE team assembled themselves, hired themselves, decided what to work on, direction, technology, plans, etc all on their own?
Or is there a C-Suite running the SRE team, even if indirectly?
> If the entire C-Suite quit, uh… what exactly would happen? People would continue doing what they had already been doing?
This is beyond naïve, I'm not sure what to call it. Yes, things hum along for some duration... and then what?
C-Suite are not laborers, as you've queued into. They provide direction, guidance, goals, identify problems, etc.
Take a human being without any of that in their personal life. What becomes of them? Nothing good... it's similar for a company. The wrong leadership dooms a company before any of the line workers even notice.
> Ah, and the SRE team assembled themselves, hired themselves, decided what to work on, direction, technology, plans, etc all on their own?
And you think the CEO did this? No - hiring managers and directors decided it was necessary.
> This is beyond naïve
Not at all. Who decides what the product needs? Product Managers, or sometimes Engineers directly. “Setting company direction” is vague at best, and can easily be replaced by people in more direct contact with customers.
And in any case, you made my point by agreeing things would hum along for some time. Executives are not critical to a company. Workers are. Without workers, profit immediately goes to $0 (modulo automated factories / SaaS, but as mentioned once something breaks, you again need people).
You seem to believe that workers are incapable of autonomy, of seeing needs and meeting them, etc. This is why Scrum exists, because people like you don’t think people like me can be trusted to do what’s necessary to keep things running.
> No - hiring managers and directors decided it was necessary.
Where did the hiring managers come from? Poofed out of nowhere?
How did they know what to hire? Just made up their own direction?
This would be like if a McDonald's line cook could just decide the company no longer will offer the Big Mac because they don't like making it.
This line of thinking is so typical for a developer. You even reference Scrum like that means anything in the areas we're discussing. But even in that setting, how do you think Product Owners know what things to prioritize? They're just making it up as they go?
> Where did the hiring managers come from? Poofed out of nowhere?
Now you're talking about founders, which is !=== CEO. I have respect for founders - they built something. If the founder happens to still be the CEO, then same. If instead it's just yet another suit, then no, they had nothing to do with the hiring manager.
> How did they know what to hire? Just made up their own direction?
I mean, yeah? Do you think that everyone under the CEO is a helpless infant, incapable of independent thought?
> You even reference Scrum like that means anything in the areas we're discussing.
Because they stem from the same line of thinking - that workers must be managed, lest they wander aimlessly and destroy the company.
> This line of thinking is so typical for a developer.
Two fun facts: I'm not a dev (SRE/DBRE), and tech is not where I gained this line of thinking. I spent a decade as a nuclear reactor operator on a fast-attack submarine. Submariners in general are taught to be independent, and fully capable of taking over someone else's duties when necessary. Nuclear-trained personnel, even more so, and those who actually operate the reactor (me) yet more.
Could a submarine leave port without the Captain? Ideally not (and the Navy would never let it happen if they had a choice), but we are absolutely trained to do so. Hurricane prep during in-port periods mostly consists of making sure the duty section are the good ones, because if it hits, whoever is on the boat is going to start her up _real fast_, take her out, and submerge. A $2 billion warship is entrusted to a skeleton crew of personnel because we know what we're doing.
It's worth noting that Google - who invented SRE - heavily borrowed from the Nuclear Navy [0].
It seems to me that a lot of these skills can and should be cultivated inside the company. Toyota famously incorporated this idea into their corporate culture from top to bottom. The company has done very well, yet the CEO's pay is modest by US standards - about $7 million this year, some 80% of which is in the form of stock options. This was a record; in recent years the job has paid in the $-5 million range. Toyota isn't the world's most bleeding edge company, but it's fair to rank it among industry leaders globally. I've never heard anyone saying they wish they hadn't bought one of their vehicles.
I’m not saying SREs are poorly paid, but they often are keeping entire companies afloat, and their pay is nowhere near that of the C-Suite.
If the entire SRE team quit / went on strike, there is a non-zero chance the next incident would utterly break the company.
If the entire C-Suite quit, uh… what exactly would happen? People would continue doing what they had already been doing?
Executives are overpaid. Period.