The role of SRE was derived at Google. It has an obvious overlap with DevOps, especially where it concerns automation and scaling to reduce waste and eliminate toil. Regardless of the differences or similarities, in the eyes of the c-suite, those insisting upon using 'Sysadmin' as a role, displays intransigence; which will only embolden recruiters to either low ball potentially more experienced candidates or sideline them in favour of those who are more willing to tailor their attitude to fit the new paradigm.
They might prefer that, but it's misleading. "SRE" is closely associated with Google's approach, where SREs are supposed to spend the majority of their time writing high quality code. If you aren't doing that, you shouldn't call yourself an SRE.
I'm told that internally, SRE at google is divided into SRE-SW and SRE-OPS. At least, thats what the recruiter told me when setting up the interview panel.
Is there a good term for SRE-as-the-Google-inspired-philosophy to distinguish it from SRE-as-the-job-title? I'm trying to find a word that conveys e.g. "We ought to be measuring SLOs and defining error budgets" and not e.g. "We need to make sure the people we wake up at night are sysadmins who can code well and not just coders".
(In fairness, I think Google brought this on themselves by reusing SRE as both the job title and the philosophy.)
