In this episode of Google's podcast about site reliability engineering (SRE), host Steve McGhee and Matt Siegler interview Sal Furino, a customer reliability engineer from Bloomberg, about service level objectives (SLOs). Furino explains SLOs, SLIs, error budgets, and targets, using examples like e-commerce cart checkouts and restaurant service to illustrate key concepts. The discussion covers the importance of user-centric metrics, the challenges of implementing SLOs, and the cultural shifts needed for developers and SRE teams to collaborate effectively. They also explore how SLOs differ in the finance industry and how AI might impact SLO creation and action policies, emphasizing the need for human understanding and judgment in defining customer journeys and interpreting data.
