This is my personal story of starting the SRE organization at Uber. If you want advice rather than reminiscence, take a look at Trunk and Branches Model and Productivity in the age of hypergrowth. After I left SocialCode in 2014, I spent a month interviewing at a handful of companies trying to figure out what to do next. I was torn between considering two different paths: (1) leading engineering at a very small startup, or (2) taking a much smaller role at a fast growing company, with the expectation that growth would create opportunity.