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This is a great example of dogmatism prevailing in this industry, and the resultant cargo cult programming. There's a long-standing trend of inflexible dogmati

This is a great example of dogmatism prevailing in this industry, and the resultant cargo cult programming. There's a long-standing trend of inflexible dogmatism that's pervasive in software development. If some thought leader, blog or Google/FB/Microsoft/etc said to do something in one way, then things must be done that way. I once had someone get red in the face and call me stupid because I suggested that hiring more employees to run things after-hours would be preferable to forcing developers to spend their free time working on-call, because apparently Google's SRE bible says that developers must support operations themselves, even if that means they're doing free work in the middle of the night after putting in their 40+ hours a week in. That was unacceptable because Google said so, who cares if employees are leaving in droves and those that remain are spread so thin that their contributions during actual work hours were suffering. Google knows best, we must do what Google says to do, even if that tanks productivity and retention. The company eventually hired teams in different timezones to keep things running 24/7.

kgeist 4y ago
>even if that means they're doing free work in the middle of the night after putting in their 40+ hours a week in We follow this too, but additional work is paid. It kind of makes sense, because developers who own a service can solve a problem faster and with a better solution than someone from a different team, because they know the full context. In practice, I had to work at night only a few times when production was down. If it's not supercritical, it can wait till the morning.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I have no problem with voluntary on-call duty that is both paid handsomely with overtime rates, even for salaried employees, along with bonuses that make sacrificing free time worth it. That's how on-call duty works in many European countries, by law, and in unionized industries and companies here in the US. The company didn't push for on-call duty at all for our EU developers, because that would cost the company more money for higher rates and bonuses. Instead, on-call duty was the responsibility of US and Canadian workers, because the company didn't have to pay them for the extra burden and loss of free time. EU developers worked on the same products, and could have done on-call duty with us, but that was never on the table for reasons that had nothing to do with developers being familiar with the projects they're supporting. It was all about reducing costs and getting free work out of developers dressed up as "best practices" from Google.
ahonhn 4y ago
I really hated on-call support last time I had to do it, and we were all already putting in vastly more than 40 hours a week (seriously are there really any developer jobs that are only 40 hours in practice?). The ridiculous thing was that it was only about a 1 in 10 chance one would get called, but I still couldn't get any sleep on those nights and would rock up even more tired than usual for work the next morning. The callers would be end-customers from USA so I was always stressed I'd be too blur to answer well right after wake up and give them a bad impression. Didn't help I only understood some parts of the system so would have to muddle through the rest. My spouse wasn't overly impressed by having the phone randomly ringing at 3am either.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Agreed, had similar experiences, and I won't take a role with any type of on-call duty. Thankfully there are a lot of companies out there that aren't trying to cannibalize their employees' free time to cut costs.

kgeist 4y ago

>even if that means they're doing free work in the middle of the night after putting in their 40+ hours a week in We follow this too, but additional work is paid. It kind of makes sense, because developers who own a service can solve a problem faster and with a better solution than someone from a different team, because they know the full context. In practice, I had to work at night only a few times when production was down. If it's not supercritical, it can wait till the morning.

heavyset_go 4y ago
I have no problem with voluntary on-call duty that is both paid handsomely with overtime rates, even for salaried employees, along with bonuses that make sacrificing free time worth it. That's how on-call duty works in many European countries, by law, and in unionized industries and companies here in the US. The company didn't push for on-call duty at all for our EU developers, because that would cost the company more money for higher rates and bonuses. Instead, on-call duty was the responsibility of US and Canadian workers, because the company didn't have to pay them for the extra burden and loss of free time. EU developers worked on the same products, and could have done on-call duty with us, but that was never on the table for reasons that had nothing to do with developers being familiar with the projects they're supporting. It was all about reducing costs and getting free work out of developers dressed up as "best practices" from Google.

ahonhn 4y ago

I really hated on-call support last time I had to do it, and we were all already putting in vastly more than 40 hours a week (seriously are there really any developer jobs that are only 40 hours in practice?). The ridiculous thing was that it was only about a 1 in 10 chance one would get called, but I still couldn't get any sleep on those nights and would rock up even more tired than usual for work the next morning. The callers would be end-customers from USA so I was always stressed I'd be too blur to answer well right after wake up and give them a bad impression. Didn't help I only understood some parts of the system so would have to muddle through the rest. My spouse wasn't overly impressed by having the phone randomly ringing at 3am either.

heavyset_go 4y ago
Agreed, had similar experiences, and I won't take a role with any type of on-call duty. Thankfully there are a lot of companies out there that aren't trying to cannibalize their employees' free time to cut costs.