DevOps/CloudHigh signal
Toil
SRE terminology for manual, repetitive operational work that doesn't add lasting value and scales linearly with system growth — a target for automation, not a badge of hard work.
Think of it like
Like manually re-typing the same form every day instead of building a template — necessary once, wasteful forever after.
Junior or senior?
Junior sounds like
Treats constant manual firefighting as just 'the job.'
Senior sounds like
Actively identifies toil and automates it away — and can say how much time that actually saved.
Ask them
“What's a piece of toil your team automated away, and how much time did it actually save?”