[kolanos]

> Some people have the tolerance to be the 'founding' Devops/SRE talent, who help the company go through that "transformation" from the ground up, implement the IR process, create the standards, win the hearts and change the minds, and thrive when the Devops tradecraft and practice is very new to the parent organization.

As someone who has been this founding engineer in the past, in my experience, this is a fun situation to find yourself. There is rarely a "win the hearts and minds" aspect when at such an early stage. As long as it works, you're golden. You literally get to call all the shots, pick all the tech, lay the foundation and the bill really only comes du when you're building a team around it and your engineering hires start asking questions. They're usually good questions, and are usually known issues (although sometimes you can learn a lot from another experienced engineer assessing your architecture), but it becomes work from that point forward. Assuming you get that far, which if you do you've largely succeeded as engineer #1 as your technical decisions didn't take the company down with them.