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I am of the mindset that a healthy team doesn't need an on call. Group chats, tight relationships, etc. usually mean someone is free just based on the odds to
by bbarn 5y ago
I am of the mindset that a healthy team doesn't need an on call. Group chats, tight relationships, etc. usually mean someone is free just based on the odds to handle a true emergency. If you have so few people that the ship can't run, but you're not in a startup environment that justifies having so few people, that is your real problem.
An average company with engineers who don't hate their job, staffed adequately, it should be a stars align kind of scenario where you can't get someone on a weekend. It's a simple matter of probability, and if that probability looks grim, either A. you're understaffed, or B, your staff is underengaged.
I have fixed customer outages on my phone out having a good time more than once. Usually with another engineer happy to help. Not just at one company. If you need an on call rotation, your culture sucks. I'm not advocating that people live to work, I'm advocating that people work at places where people enjoy working with their peers and their product enough that an occasional blip isn't a big deal. With the right infrastructure and the right people you should have this.
- Arainach 5y ago> Group chats, tight relationships, etc. usually mean someone is free just based on the odds to handle a true emergency. Congratulations, you've made you entire team on call year round. I don't read work chats outside of core working hours if I'm not currently on-call. In general, most people shouldn't. Doing so is awful for your stress levels and work-life balance. I did it for more than a decade, burning out twice in the meantime, and things have been much better since I stopped.
- psychstudio 5y agoI don't read group chats _inside_ working hours. I'm working at work, not group chatting.
- thirdsun 5y agoIf that means you're reading your chats later it sounds as if you're also working outside working hours.
- bbarn 5y agoYou missed the point entirely. The goal is not to need on call, because you BOTH have a stable system that requires rare off hours interventions, AND you have a team that owns that and is bothered rarely enough to not need to have a formal rotation. On call systems with stable systems in my experience tend to be a real problem because people lose the on call urgency anyway. TL;DR - the problem is your system, not being on call or not.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoI was on a team that handled a lot of things that way, and we made a deliberate, conscious shift to pull them into oncall rotations. We found that it was severely compromising work-life balance; engineers outside of the old guard thought they were expected to work most nights and most weekends, because they'd constantly see people get bonuses and accolades for some stuff they did at 6PM Saturday. I personally enjoy the "work whenever you want, play whenever you want" model, but I really don't think it works as an oncall policy.
- erik_seaberg 5y agoI’m on a team of six in the same time zone. None of us are going to conveniently be watching the alerts at 4 AM Sunday. One of us has to get woken up who wasn’t planning to be well rested for anything that day.
- aledalgrande 5y agono buddy your idea sounds like unlimited vacation days, it is worse than the original method
- stefan_ 5y agoThe only thing worse than on-call is the expectation that everyone should be available at all times.
- aahortwwy 5y agoPlease refer to it as "culture," not "expectations," the latter makes people uncomfortable.
- stavros 5y agoAh yes, the "always be working" method. That way you never need overtime!