Staffing folks who can fix these systems 24/7 for the 2-3 times a year something needs to happen doesn't seem like a great idea to me. If the systems are failin

Staffing folks who can fix these systems 24/7 for the 2-3 times a year something needs to happen doesn't seem like a great idea to me. If the systems are failing left and right continually, or if on-call is used to handle things that can be done from a simple runbook? Sure. But at some point you need an escalation path when its more than that, and sooner or later that escalation path goes to whoever built the thing. These are usually salaried jobs, so "outside of work hour" is kind of subjective, since you're paid to get the job done. So then it comes to expectations, and $$$$. Software engineer salaries are not just a result of the supply vs demand (well, everything is supply vs demand, of course, but there's subtleties). It wasn't that long ago (late 90s, early 2000s) that a 9-5 code monkey job was a low paying job. It makes sense: it's not particularly difficult. But then organizations realized that they could get more bangs for their bucks if the same folks could handle uncertainties, if they would train themselves, if they could architect systems on their own, and yes, if they were responsible for keeping the systems running. That, of course, came at a cost. In addition to growing demands raising wages, you also need to pay a premium to get someone to agree to all that crap. And so they did. But now as so many people entered the field, there's an expectation that the salaries are the baseline, and that the other responsibilities beyond code monkeying are a premium. Supply and demand will kick in sooner or later, when folks realize that 6 figure salaries for a 9-5 desk job is a really good deal (we already see it happening, where entry level roles are getting hard to come by). But in the end, the additional duties, like oncall, really have been baked in the salaries. I really don't think its unreasonable to have someone woken up a handful of times when taking salaries that can go as high as competing with a doctor's... (who's also on call). Now, that's within reason. My partner worked at AWS for a while, and they'd get paged 5-6 times a night on a bad week. F* that. No amount of money is worth screwing over your health.