Berlin

November 4 & 5, 2024

New York

September 4 & 5, 2024

How to manage toil as you scale

What is the right balance between project work and toil work?
February 21, 2022

Make sure your SRE teams are allocating their expertise effectively for the best impact.

All SREs are familiar with how toil work can be distracting, time-consuming, and a drag on resources. And as your production services scale, time becomes even more precious, with more emphasis on meeting the demands of all the applications and services you support. 

​So in this situation, how do you manage toil in a way that allows an SRE team to focus on the ‘engineering’ part of their role?

In this panel, we will be bringing together leading SREs to discuss how they’ve been able manage the time they dedicate to toil in a way that lets their services scale. We’ll discuss changing responsibilities for toil in the modern engineering org, the perfect workload balance, and whether or not eliminating toil completely is the best way to go.

Key takeaways

  • Develop processes that balance toil and project work to support your company’s rate of growth
  • Reduce unnecessary toil to allow SRE teams to contribute more effectively
  • Create fulfilment in your SRE roles to improve productivity and retention
  • Understand how the right amount of toil can actually be beneficial to your org