SRE at 53 watching my role get automated – how do I build something of my own?
An SRE with 53 years of experience reflects on the inevitability of AI automating their role and considers building an AI-driven solution themselves. They emphasize the importance of validating product ideas before investing significant time and resources. Creating a trustworthy AI SRE tool could either replace their job or reveal new opportunities in the evolving tech landscape.
- ▪Product-market fit is difficult to predict, and many startups fail by building products nobody wants.
- ▪Validating a product idea thoroughly before development increases the chances of success.
- ▪There is a significant difference between convincing people to adopt a product and offering an obvious, intuitive solution.
- ▪Building an AI tool that automates an SRE's role could lead to either self-replacement or uncovering new professional opportunities.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Product market fit is hard. You never know ahead of time if your great idea is actually great. (And people will pay for it). I used to laugh at startups that spent a million bucks building something nobody wanted or needed till I tried doing it myself. If you have 3 hours to chop down the tree spend two of them sharpening the ax. (Do everything in your power to validate a product idea before building it)There’s a huge difference between something you have to convince people of and something that is so obvious everyone thinks they could have thought of it.If I were you I’d lean into your intuition of how precisely AI will replace what you do. The fact that you’re certain of it means you can picture it. Build it yourself and own it.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Ycombinator.