Diversity and Inclusion in SRE: A Postmortem

Wednesday, 30 August, 2017 - 09:4010:20

Niall Richard Murphy, Google

Abstract: 

Whether a cause or a consequence of diversity & inclusion problems, members of minority groups in SRE experience harassment, bullying, and anti-social exclusion far too often. Although primarily an ethical and behavioural issue, it also has extremely costly negative effects on team effectiveness, arising from loss of psychological safety and even attrition. The data supporting these assertions are reasonably clear, but what is perhaps less clear is what to do about it.

We therefore analyse the situation in the form of a postmortem, suggesting some root causes, presenting a timeline, and analysing factors which contributed to (and offset) The Incident, and propose some actions to remediate.

Niall Richard Murphy, Google

Niall Richard Murphy is the head of Ads Reliability Engineering for Google Ireland, where his group is responsible for the infrastructure underlying ~90% of Google's annual revenue. He is the instigator, co-author and co-editor of platinum-selling "Site Reliability Engineering" (O' Reilly, 2016), a history of the Irish Internet, and is the holder of degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics, and Poetry Studies. He lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.

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BibTeX
@conference {205454,
author = {Niall Richard Murphy},
title = {Diversity and Inclusion in {SRE}: A Postmortem},
year = {2017},
address = {Dublin},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}

Presentation Video 

Presentation Audio