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that's a pretty selective quote. you skipped over: > If an organization thinks their systems should be available 24x7 they should staff people 24x7. One way t
by shoo 5y ago
that's a pretty selective quote. you skipped over:
> If an organization thinks their systems should be available 24x7 they should staff people 24x7.
One way to achieve 24x7 coverage without anyone being structurally on-call outside of standard office hours could be "follow the sun" support -- have offices in multiple timezones around the world and run 3 x 8 hour shifts each day of support working their local office hours to provide 24/7 coverage. Still need enough staff at each site to handle rotation for covering weekends and for people to go on holiday and get sick or quit for new jobs etc.
I can understand why many companies would prefer not to pay for that if they can get away with cheaper alternatives, and why they might prefer to understaff and push the burden onto employees, but that's the company's problem, not the problem of the individual worker who trades their life by the hour in exchange for money.
- echelon 5y agoIf you're not a global empire with offices all over the world yet, the simpler thing is to pay your engineers well and tell them being oncall is one of the responsibilities.
- ipaddr 5y agoIf you are not a global company being down at 3am doesn't matter either.
- valzam 5y agoBecause of course all companies exist in the same time zone as all their clients... Have you ever worked at a SaaS company? Having customers from around the world is literally a thing from day 1, especially if you are not US or (to a lesser extent already) EU based. Try starting a SaaS company in Australia and see how far "doesn't matter if it goes down at 3am" gets you.
- ipaddr 5y agoStarting a company in Australia and targeting a completely different timezone and not staff support at 3am when traffic is heaviest seems like gambling.
- shoo 5y agoArguably the importance of availability and time to restore service is less about if the company is global and more about the nature of the services they provide to their customers. Global ecommerce company letting people buy junk they don't need 24/7 at low low prices? An outage may frustrate customers and lose some sales but they might get most of the customers back in the long run, even if it takes them days to get the site to come back up and stay up. Bits of the local electricity grid get damaged? Communications for ambulance dispatch go down and stay down? Those outages may directly cause fatalities or greatly increase the risk of fatalities until problems are safely isolated and service can be restored.