> The maintenance of operational systems is done by software engineering teams, rather than traditional sysadmin types, but the hiring requirements for software engineering skills for the SRE are slightly lower than the requirements for the Software Engineering position.
I'm an SRE. Both the OP article and the YouTube video are making generalizations that aren't really accurate.
There's two positions called "SREs", SRE-SWE and SRE-SA. SRE-SWE has to pass a full software interview, and are equivalent to SWEs working for other departments. SRE-SA are not expected to have Google-level software engineering skills, but make up for that in other knowledge areas.
but from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4vMcD7zKM0&feature=youtu.be...
"All of SREs have to pass a full software interview to get hired"