Mostly it meant SREs tended to be older than other engineers at Google (I was an...

Mostly it meant SREs tended to be older than other engineers at Google (I was an SRE there for a while), I think by an average of nearly a decade.

Broad experience, depth on a few topics. It's not impossible at all, it just takes time.

(edit: Note this may have changed since I left the company in 2009. It's been a while!)