[danpalmer]

This doesn't say SRE is shutting down, it says that they're changing the ratio of SRE to SWE. One thing to realise about Google is that the technology is increasingly unified across the company. 10 years ago everything worked in different ways, but now there are very standard technologies and paths, and naturally this requires fewer SREs to the SWEs developing the products. I don't think this is a bad thing, and in the layoffs SREs have not to my knowledge been hit any harder than SWEs.