This week Serena Tiede, an SRE at Optum, joins Corey to talk about the world of SREs. Serena discusses their mix of traditional and non-traditional background and making the jump from electrical engineering to tech. Serena tells us about their beginnings at Optum and the different, and welcome, challenges of moving from system to system as an SRE. They talk about what Serena carrys forward from their background, starting in security and moving over to becoming an SRE and learning Docker. Corey and Serena also discuss the interminable nature of the cloud and the vast differences between when we’re footing the AWS bill—and when its the company’s problem! It turns out Serena learned some tricks on keeping costs down by tuning in to the various “Last Week in AWS” podcasts. You can do the same!