"I've also spoken with Googlers about their devops/SRE responsibilities and I've gotten the distinct impression that what is advertised as being the organization's "best practice" is not in fact the common practice."

--This is exactly my gripe with this article and accompanying comments - portraying the Google workplace in an almost mythical fashion and failing to see the marketing ploy behind it. I suspect that SREs who work(ed) there don't really want to equate themselves to DevOps because then they would lose their prestige and devalue their market worth. Google management also doesn't want to do that because otherwise no one would take up the job. Call it as you see it people. See my other comment about this point, which adds more information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12446385

(edit:throwaway account because I am revealing personal information in the other comment)