Summary

Charity Majors reflects on how her views on AI have shifted dramatically in the year since she co-keynoted SRECon25, where she urged skeptical SREs to engage with AI without being reflexively antagonistic. She now believes the center of gravity has fully shifted to AI/agentic workflows and advocates for engineers to proactively embrace this change rather than wait for it to be forced on them. SREs in particular, with their outcome-orientation and experience building guardrails, are well-positioned to lead in this new era.

Key Insight

SREs' career-long focus on outcomes over craft makes them uniquely positioned to lead — not resist — the AI transition, but only if they proactively engage rather than wait for change to be forced on them.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 5

  Don't wait for it to be forced on you. Swim out to meet it.

• 8

  That toddler is heading off to school. With a loaded gun.

• 7

  Sometimes the hype train brings you internets, sometimes the hype train brings you tulips.

• 3

  The industry needs our skills to help engineering teams go fast forever.

• 6

  Know your nature, and lean against it.

Tone

reflective, urgent, pragmatic