One thing I've realized more and more over the years: it's the operational roles (infra, SRE, Devops) that are actually most stressful. Sure, if you're building product, you get deadlines, but they are predictable and they come and go.
But being oncall for a shakey infra stack? That shit is hell. No deadlines, just the threat of incidents or downtime at any time of day.
It's especially frustrating that I firmly believe operations is a solved problem, but good luck getting a company to adopt the practices that every other mature tech company has already figured out.
But being oncall for a shakey infra stack? That shit is hell. No deadlines, just the threat of incidents or downtime at any time of day.