[jsmthrowaway]

> In the same way that magic does not exist, it is not possible to plan future capacity with accuracy.

I...what? Capacity Planning for Unpredictable Growth is literally SRE 103. It's hard and will have a margin of error, yes, but it's not bloody magic. The "magic" is in identifying and collecting the correct metrics that somewhat model the abstracted utilizations of the property, because almost everyone picks the wrong ones; this is situational so there is no blanket advice to offer except that load average is almost certainly wrong, as well as consulting only one metric. If you're working capacity from five or six key application metrics you're probably on the right path.

SRE is, quite specifically, application operations engineering. If you can't model your application's growth I'd be more inclined to call you an SA. (There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, to be clear, even speaking as an SRE. And I am aware several valley companies are diluting the term.)