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After a few years in management, when it comes to paging there are two groups: 1) People that want to fix their own code. They usually don't have to be told "y

After a few years in management, when it comes to paging there are two groups: 1) People that want to fix their own code. They usually don't have to be told "you have pager duty" -- they just care. They even become upset if they don't know about the page and will even install their own paging systems without your knowledge. 2) People that can't be bothered. They dont' answer the phone, don't answer slack - instead they just watch a re-run of the mindy project and eat ice cream while your production system is crashing. Generally people in 1) fix things for 2). Wage theft is really from group 2) - because they steal from 1). Each time I have fixed something for group 2) - I either fire them personally monday or start an all out campaign to get them fired. Firing is hard. But letting the entire team down just makes it easy. Ironically, if you want less pages just fire more of 2).

Grangar 10y ago
You can't really expect everyone to be available on-call though. If the people in 1) want to fix their own code, why can't they do it more often? Where I work we have a separate pager duty group, that anyone can join. Why would you? Because a) you care, and/or b) the compensation is great. If you don't want to, that's great. No one will hold it against you. We are people after all.
greyboy 10y ago
I'm not sure what industry this was in, but neither reflect my experience working in Telecom and HIPAA-related environments. We couldn't push any fixes without full UAT/validation testing. No "install own paging systems" would be tolerated on national phone/video networks or anything HIPAA related. We wouldn've been walked out the door ASAP. I think it really depends. We had critical SLA and support levels we had to respond to. If a backup was called and there wasn't a very specific reason the primary was not able to respond, there would be consequences. I hated not being able to leave or do something spontaneously (especially on a weekend, for example), because we always had to be near. Of course, all that would change if they made it attractively worth my while. But almost nobody does. :)
jayofdoom 10y ago
There is a third group -- which I would place myself in. I feel a strong responsibility to an environment I work in; but I also have a need for a disconnect and work/life balance. I absolutely am not ok with people in group #2, but I think group #1 is similarly unhealthy -- being constantly aware of issues can lead rapidly to burnout. This is why you have to have an on-call rotation, with an SLA (i.e. all pages are ack'd within ten minutes) with enforcement for people who regularly miss pages, and keep the life-disruption to one or two team members. Obviously, anyone who's worked on a large software product knows you might get an escalation even if not on-call, but that's a hugely different workload than being attached to a pager and having to respond to them.
CodeMage 10y ago
Every time I feel our industry has evolved beyond the "devs vs. managers" culture, something like this comes up to make me despair again. I find it absolutely horrifying that you don't stop at the false dichotomy of diving every dev in those two groups, with no shades of grey in between, but actually go one step further and recommend firing everyone who isn't in the first group. Yes, people care. Yes, they want to fix their own code. They also want to teach their little kids to ride a bike without training wheels. Your system might have problems every week, but that moment when your kid gives you a big grin and says "look, daddy, I'm doing it alone!", that happens once in that kid's life. So unless your system is controlling air traffic or supplying oxygen to hospital patients or something like that, you might want to consider that there's more to people's life than their work.

Grangar 10y ago

You can't really expect everyone to be available on-call though. If the people in 1) want to fix their own code, why can't they do it more often? Where I work we have a separate pager duty group, that anyone can join. Why would you? Because a) you care, and/or b) the compensation is great. If you don't want to, that's great. No one will hold it against you. We are people after all.

greyboy 10y ago

I'm not sure what industry this was in, but neither reflect my experience working in Telecom and HIPAA-related environments. We couldn't push any fixes without full UAT/validation testing. No "install own paging systems" would be tolerated on national phone/video networks or anything HIPAA related. We wouldn've been walked out the door ASAP. I think it really depends. We had critical SLA and support levels we had to respond to. If a backup was called and there wasn't a very specific reason the primary was not able to respond, there would be consequences. I hated not being able to leave or do something spontaneously (especially on a weekend, for example), because we always had to be near. Of course, all that would change if they made it attractively worth my while. But almost nobody does. :)

jayofdoom 10y ago

There is a third group -- which I would place myself in. I feel a strong responsibility to an environment I work in; but I also have a need for a disconnect and work/life balance. I absolutely am not ok with people in group #2, but I think group #1 is similarly unhealthy -- being constantly aware of issues can lead rapidly to burnout. This is why you have to have an on-call rotation, with an SLA (i.e. all pages are ack'd within ten minutes) with enforcement for people who regularly miss pages, and keep the life-disruption to one or two team members. Obviously, anyone who's worked on a large software product knows you might get an escalation even if not on-call, but that's a hugely different workload than being attached to a pager and having to respond to them.

CodeMage 10y ago

Every time I feel our industry has evolved beyond the "devs vs. managers" culture, something like this comes up to make me despair again. I find it absolutely horrifying that you don't stop at the false dichotomy of diving every dev in those two groups, with no shades of grey in between, but actually go one step further and recommend firing everyone who isn't in the first group. Yes, people care. Yes, they want to fix their own code. They also want to teach their little kids to ride a bike without training wheels. Your system might have problems every week, but that moment when your kid gives you a big grin and says "look, daddy, I'm doing it alone!", that happens once in that kid's life. So unless your system is controlling air traffic or supplying oxygen to hospital patients or something like that, you might want to consider that there's more to people's life than their work.