> "Firefighting" is being used in two different contexts here. In the SRE document, it means literal incident response, while in the Staff Eng context, it means "addressing whatever the organizational P0 is", which may occasionally be a literal incident, but it may also be developing an incident response team, or lending a hand to a project that is behind schedule, or...whatever.
Good point. That's right.
> There's always something that is highest priority, and having a floating person(s) who can continually identify and provide support for whatever that thing is isn't a sign of a dysfunctional organization.
Yes, I do think that "floating" is an appropriate term here. I've also seen "consulting engineer" used in this context within large multinational organizations.
However, I would point out that too much floating may be a sign of diminishing returns on matrix management.
Good point. That's right.
> There's always something that is highest priority, and having a floating person(s) who can continually identify and provide support for whatever that thing is isn't a sign of a dysfunctional organization.
Yes, I do think that "floating" is an appropriate term here. I've also seen "consulting engineer" used in this context within large multinational organizations.
However, I would point out that too much floating may be a sign of diminishing returns on matrix management.