
Reliability Enablers
Software reliability is a tough topic for engineers in many organizations. The Reliability Enablers (Ash Patel and Sebastian Vietz) know this from experience. Join us as we demystify reliability jargon like SRE, DevOps, and more. We interview experts and share practical insights. Our mission is to help you boost your success in reliability-enabling areas like observability, incident response, release engineering, and more. read.srepath.com
Latest episodes

Nov 14, 2023 • 43min
#15 Growing Reliability Engineering Across 5+ Companies (with Nash Seshan)
Ash Patel talks with Nash Seshan, who has supported reliability work in over 5 organizations, including Cisco, eBay, Dropbox, Lyft, Netflix, and Wayfair. He shares his learnings from reliability work at these big brands. Nash also draws from his experience as co-founder of a Y Combinator-funded startup on effective engineering leadership. He also gives his take on issues with ill-conceived automation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Nov 7, 2023 • 42min
#14 Faster Incident Resolution through Data-Driven Notebooks (with Ivan Merrill)
Ash Patel talks with Ivan Merrill of Fiberplane about wrangling the big data that incidents and systems generate through collaborative notebooks. Ivan also touches on how open-source tools like Autometrics enable deeper observability of code by increasing the granularity of data used for incident response and retrospectives. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Oct 31, 2023 • 33min
#13 Making Sense of OpenTelemetry and Observability (with Adriana Villela)
Ash Patel talks with Adriana Villela (CNCF Ambassador, OpenTelemetry contributor, and senior developer advocate at Lightstep) about the promise of OpenTelemetry for observability teams, as well as the challenges of doing it right. She also touches on engineering leadership topics, recalling her experience as a leader of platform engineering and observability teams. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Oct 24, 2023 • 29min
#12 From Incident Firefighting to Reliability First (with Robert Ross)
Ash Patel talks with Robert Ross of Firehydrant about his experience in offering incident management software to SREs and other software incident responders. Highlights include defining the broader concept of reliability, making smarter choices for handling incidents, and more. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Oct 17, 2023 • 27min
#11 Rising to Staff Engineer in DevOps and SRE (with Rajesh Reddy N)
Ash Patel interviews Rajesh Reddy N about his experiences as a senior DevOps and SRE individual contributor. Rajesh shares his insights on having systems to minimize alert fatigue, the importance of security in DevOps, and more. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Oct 10, 2023 • 24min
#10 Using AI for Kubernetes troubleshooting self-service (with Kyle Forster)
Ash Patel interviews Kyle Forster of RunWhen about his experiences as an ex-Google director helping SREs and running an AI-based company that supports Kubernetes troubleshooting. Their conversation will cover themes like enabling junior SREs, the role of SRE in shift-left, and handling misaligned incentive models in organizations. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Oct 2, 2023 • 29min
#9 Inside Booking.com's Site Reliability Engineering practice (with Samuele Tonon and Yoann Fouquet)
In this episode of the SREpath Podcast, Ash Patel interviews two SRE managers from Booking.com, Samuele and Yoann, to gain insights into their experiences and strategies for developing a successful SRE practice within a large organization. Yoann is a senior manager responsible for managing SRE teams and serves as the SRE Craft lead. Samuele is an SRE engineering manager working in the Big Data department and manages a team of eight to nine people.Yoann officially began his journey in SRE in 2017, transitioning from a consultancy role to an engineer focused on reliability.Samuele's background included network engineering and DevOps roles before he joined Booking.com in 2018 as an SRE.Booking.com initially didn't have SREs but started adopting SRE practices in 2017 as they transitioned from a monolithic architecture to microservices.The SRE team at Booking.com grew from around 20-30 members to nearly 200, with various teams handling infrastructure, central roles, and embedded roles with product teams. Learn more about the challenges they faced and tackled by listening to the episode. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Sep 11, 2023 • 23min
#8 Software Reliability Ninja Who is NOT an SRE (with Pablo Bouzada)
Ash Patel interviews Pablo Bouzada about his beliefs on software reliability as a non-SRE leader. They discuss the importance of effective leadership to drive effective reliability changes in the software system, as well as the challenges of providing reliable service within video streaming giant, ViaPlay. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Sep 5, 2023 • 4min
What happened to the podcast?
We haven't hit hard times, just doing other things for the last 2 months including making plans for more interesting episodes on this podcast! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com

Jul 13, 2023 • 25min
#7 Bringing HR onboard with SRE hiring and onboarding
In this episode, we highlight the importance of engaging with HR partners to establish an effective understanding of the SRE career model. This will allow them to help with recruiting, hiring, and onboarding tailored to the SRE function. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.srepath.com