Teaching SRE
summary
Designed course "Managing Complex Systems" at Pomona College that turns CS majors into SREs by having durable teams of 4–5 build and run a messy, real web app on AWS (EC2), install PostgreSQL and Tomcat, add New Relic or Honeycomb instrumentation, run 10,000 RPM synthetic load experiments, run on-call rotations and write postmortems. Grading emphasizes 90% availability during tests. Enrollment grows 17→33→31, feedback cites increased problem‑solving confidence and several students calling it their favorite class; materials published at SIGCSE.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction
- 10:21Why teaching SRE became necessary
- 20:45Practicum for real-world SRE skills
- 30:37Systems thinking readings and discussions
- 40:09Class outcomes and student feedback
- 45:03Future plans and scaling challenges
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