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Maybe it's just the type of people amazon hires? I've been programming for 5+ years. Know what I'm doing today at 5 pm? Headed over to Lake Michigan with the fi

Maybe it's just the type of people amazon hires? I've been programming for 5+ years. Know what I'm doing today at 5 pm? Headed over to Lake Michigan with the fiance. Yesterday I went on a 4 mile run. Personally I never check things outside of 8-5 and my employer is A-OK with that. The biggest problem is when people like this article's author get a job and the HR people never make it clear that they may need to have "pager duty" or otherwise work outside of 8-5. Those different expectations is what caused him to have a very bad experience.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> never make it clear that they may need to have "pager duty" or otherwise work outside of 8-5. Yes, these expectations should be made clear from the beginning. I suspect they don't as they would be even more desperate to hire.
- notyourwork 6y ago
  Amazon is open about engineers owning their on-call duty. This should not be a surprise to a new hire.
  - ladrien 6y ago
    Idiot
    - dang 6y ago
      Personal attacks and name-calling are bannable offenses here. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting to HN? We'd be grateful.
    - notyourwork 6y ago
      I’m not sure what in my comment offended you. Sorry.
rootusrootus 6y ago
One thing seems to have changed since the OP wrote their post -- managers at AWS are open about the on-call requirement. At least the ones in Portland. They were proud that they owned the product all the way from the code on the back to the customer at the front. So if you didn't want to be responsible for some level of ops, you knew that going in. I didn't move forward to an interview, this was just from a meet-and-greet they did a few months ago (they do it every month IIRC). I have other reasons for not being at all interested in working for Amazon, but I figured it would be interesting to meet with them informally anyway.
- majewsky 6y ago
  > They were proud that they owned the product all the way from the code on the back to the customer at the front. So if you didn't want to be responsible for some level of ops, you knew that going in. There's a huge difference between being responsible for (some level of) ops and literally climbing out of bed when the pager rings. At work, I'm responsible for the operations of the services I develop, which means that I'm doing third level support during normal business hours and I write the playbooks that first/second level support executes. You certainly won't catch me working after 5 PM.
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    I've always wondered how these sort of pager-duty notifications worked for heavy sleepers.
    - ryanmaclean 6y ago
      They didn't for me - it meant my SO would wake me up after they'd been woken up. I then started wearing headphones to bed so that I would hear the phone ring and not disturb them, but when you're rolling out of bed and hopping on a call at 3AM it's difficult. What I seriously underestimated was the strain that being on-call can put on a relationship, it's a massive regret.
    - peterclary 6y ago
      I worked for a company where developers could opt in to on-call cover. Doing so meant you got some extra cash, and if you were called then you got so much for the first hour, then a different amount for each hour after that. Not being coy, I can’t remember the details. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, and would go to bed with my phone on silent, set to ring a long time before going to answerphone, and with my Apple Watch on my wrist. If my phone rang then my watch would buzz me awake, eventually. The only snag was if, in my sleep, I knocked the watch out of contact enough that it locked and wouldn’t buzz on calls, but in practice I was lucky enough that I never got a call when that happened. Not that I was called often. The company had developers around the world so it was only if they needed some specific knowledge or skills. That meant that being on-call was mostly a fee to compensate for being available at short notice and not drinking, etc. Ultimately they decided they weren’t getting enough calls to justify the cost of paying the on-call fees and scrapped the system, just relying upon whichever developers around the world were working.
dopylitty 6y ago
"Pager duty" is an abusive practice anyway. If the company thinks its applications are important enough that it needs people around 24/7 to work on them then the company should hire enough people to have 3 shifts a day.
- notyourwork 6y ago
  Is it abusive if you willingly sign up for it? Doctors are on-call for emergencies. We compensate for this so I'm not clear on why its abusive if employees willingly sign up. If you don't want to be on-call, find another job.
  - bougiefever 6y ago
    I think if you are compensated for it, and allowed to recuperate from middle-of-the-night working, it's ok. If the employee knew this was part of the job though, and not something that was thrust upon them after they were hired.

MattGaiser 6y ago

> never make it clear that they may need to have "pager duty" or otherwise work outside of 8-5. Yes, these expectations should be made clear from the beginning. I suspect they don't as they would be even more desperate to hire.

notyourwork 6y ago
Amazon is open about engineers owning their on-call duty. This should not be a surprise to a new hire.
- ladrien 6y ago
  Idiot
  - dang 6y ago
    Personal attacks and name-calling are bannable offenses here. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting to HN? We'd be grateful.
  - notyourwork 6y ago
    I’m not sure what in my comment offended you. Sorry.

rootusrootus 6y ago

One thing seems to have changed since the OP wrote their post -- managers at AWS are open about the on-call requirement. At least the ones in Portland. They were proud that they owned the product all the way from the code on the back to the customer at the front. So if you didn't want to be responsible for some level of ops, you knew that going in. I didn't move forward to an interview, this was just from a meet-and-greet they did a few months ago (they do it every month IIRC). I have other reasons for not being at all interested in working for Amazon, but I figured it would be interesting to meet with them informally anyway.

majewsky 6y ago
> They were proud that they owned the product all the way from the code on the back to the customer at the front. So if you didn't want to be responsible for some level of ops, you knew that going in. There's a huge difference between being responsible for (some level of) ops and literally climbing out of bed when the pager rings. At work, I'm responsible for the operations of the services I develop, which means that I'm doing third level support during normal business hours and I write the playbooks that first/second level support executes. You certainly won't catch me working after 5 PM.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  I've always wondered how these sort of pager-duty notifications worked for heavy sleepers.
  - ryanmaclean 6y ago
    They didn't for me - it meant my SO would wake me up after they'd been woken up. I then started wearing headphones to bed so that I would hear the phone ring and not disturb them, but when you're rolling out of bed and hopping on a call at 3AM it's difficult. What I seriously underestimated was the strain that being on-call can put on a relationship, it's a massive regret.
  - peterclary 6y ago
    I worked for a company where developers could opt in to on-call cover. Doing so meant you got some extra cash, and if you were called then you got so much for the first hour, then a different amount for each hour after that. Not being coy, I can’t remember the details. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, and would go to bed with my phone on silent, set to ring a long time before going to answerphone, and with my Apple Watch on my wrist. If my phone rang then my watch would buzz me awake, eventually. The only snag was if, in my sleep, I knocked the watch out of contact enough that it locked and wouldn’t buzz on calls, but in practice I was lucky enough that I never got a call when that happened. Not that I was called often. The company had developers around the world so it was only if they needed some specific knowledge or skills. That meant that being on-call was mostly a fee to compensate for being available at short notice and not drinking, etc. Ultimately they decided they weren’t getting enough calls to justify the cost of paying the on-call fees and scrapped the system, just relying upon whichever developers around the world were working.

dopylitty 6y ago

"Pager duty" is an abusive practice anyway. If the company thinks its applications are important enough that it needs people around 24/7 to work on them then the company should hire enough people to have 3 shifts a day.

notyourwork 6y ago
Is it abusive if you willingly sign up for it? Doctors are on-call for emergencies. We compensate for this so I'm not clear on why its abusive if employees willingly sign up. If you don't want to be on-call, find another job.
- bougiefever 6y ago
  I think if you are compensated for it, and allowed to recuperate from middle-of-the-night working, it's ok. If the employee knew this was part of the job though, and not something that was thrust upon them after they were hired.