The SRE team is infamous! I tried the interview for the SRE team to see what it was like. At the final interview I was asked to implement a K-NN algorithm, which I did, and then optimize it for k dimensions.
When it was over I asked the interviewer if there was ever a time when he had to implement such an algorithm on the job during a production outage event and his answer: No.
In my experience working within devops teams maintaining and developing public cloud infrastructure I don't think I've ever had the pleasure either.
In retrospect I don't think it was a bad experience. I think there are roles which exist in software that do require a higher level of rigor than others. I'm often amazed how easily many developers will dismiss performance concerns (premature optimization!) for example. I would expect a hiring process to be upfront and honest about such requirements and candidates should be aware of their own skills and background before applying.
But most software development jobs at ABC Corp are not the SRE Team at Google and they hire as if they were.
I think that's the risk we take with standardizing and automating hiring processes.
update: just markup.
