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yes, SRE uses loads of python, despite a decade+ pseudo-mandate to encourage Go

I have heard that SRE teams can get away with this on the idea that SREs usually are not as good at software engineering as SWEs, so some bad engineering practices can fly.

I never saw Python actually get used, though, in the projects I worked on.

That's not my experience.

First, there are two SRE ladders: SRE-SWE and SRE-SysEng. SRE-SWE have the same interviews and hiring bar as SWEs. SysEng have less coding interviews but I think the interview questions are more practical and less algorithm oriented.

Still, SREs are subject to the same rules and policies as SWEs when it comes to submitting code.

And in the end, I don't see why using python on some projects would be a bad engineering practice

This is blatantly false, along with the idea that there’s only very little python.

On the scale of the company, Python is a very small language, and the very important stuff is 100% not in Python. However, 100,000 people work at Google, and probably over a million have it on their resume, so "small" at Google is "big" for a lot of people.

Google can definitely afford (in technical terms) to be a follower rather than a leader when it comes to Python.

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