Service Level Objectives (SLOs) are important for understanding if services are reliable, but many organizations find them hard to use effectively. It's like a tool that sounds great but often doesn't work as well in practice.
Adopting and managing SLOs usually requires a lot of effort and support from the whole team, not just the SREs. If the company culture isn't ready for it, SLOs often get ignored.
There's a big gap between the theory of SLOs and how they're applied in real companies. Many teams struggle with choosing the right metrics and getting everyone to care about reliability over new features.
Many people just want basic monitoring tools that are easy to use and affordable. They care more about practical solutions than getting into complex observability concepts.
There's a balance between reliability, shipping speed, and team well-being that needs to be carefully managed. It's important not to sacrifice too much reliability just to be fast.
The focus should be on delivering a cost-effective way to monitor systems, rather than just aiming for the latest version of observability. It's essential to figure out who will handle the work involved.