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> I'm a bit worried that it will hamper my career prospects, So honestly, it probably won't, depending on how far you want to go. But lots of the broken teams

> I'm a bit worried that it will hamper my career prospects, So honestly, it probably won't, depending on how far you want to go. But lots of the broken teams people are describing here are easily fixed by mandating that the tech lead / architect / whatever participate equally (or more-than-equally) in the on-call process. It's the simplest way to get people with leverage to push back on POs / executives who see it as just a cost to balance. So if you want to have one of those positions one day, and you want to do it well - you should want to do some on-call, because you need to know if the systems and processes you're designing / managing are hell for those on-call.

adastra22 4y ago
Or work on a product that isn’t a 24/7 hosted service, and enjoy your evenings and weekends. I’ve never been on call, never will be, and it hasn’t impacted my employment.
- morelisp 4y ago
  The number of situations where this applies is pretty small though in employment % though, and probably shrinking. I'm curious what you work on. Most things boutique enough to eventually present a "fixed product" today are also usually high-end enough for someone to be doing 24/7 support.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    I’m a research engineer at a innovation lab. HN skews the bias towards online startups. I’d wager most software engineers are not in such roles.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      I agree about HN's skew towards startup, but I think most full-time software engineers support businesses that are essentially available 24/7 or at least 12/7. Anything involving selling online, handling money, any kind of SaaS, or any company with worldwide customer support needs something, even if the main product engineers aren't aware of it (usually to the detriment of the people who are on-call). That's lots of startups, but it's also most blue chips or any kind of infrastructure. > I’m a research engineer at a innovation lab. I mean, assuming this is private, this is either an incredibly biased/exclusive or a very startup-economy-ish job itself. If your company is otherwise big enough to have a lab it's big enough there's on-call teams somewhere, and if you want to be a CTO/VP/DirEng/Architect you'd better know how they work.
      - adastra22 4y ago
        There are vast amounts of software engineering roles you are ignoring. Pretty much all of embedded firmware or hardware driver development. The entire video game industry excluding online play. The many software developers that provide solutions for enterprise software with 9-5 support contracts. Mobile app developers. Whole fields of consulting and integration experts that set their own hours. Pretty much every data scientist or machine learning role ever. It is online services that are niche. It's just what this website is mostly focused on so it seems more prominent.
        morelisp 4y ago
        > Pretty much all of embedded firmware or hardware driver development. Any hardware used in something that has an on-call process, itself has an on-call process (or is from somewhere large enough to offer follow-the-sun support). As I said it may not involve the same engineers, but it's there. > The entire video game industry excluding online play. That's also a vanishingly small portion of employment in the games industry. > Mobile app developers. Again, most mobile apps are... for some kind of web service, or have some kind of backend, and so have some kind of on-call team. > The many software developers that provide solutions for enterprise software with 9-5 support contracts Examples? Just because not everyone is paying for the 5-9 contract, doesn't mean it's not there. > Whole fields of consulting and integration experts that set their own hours. Yes. What percentage of the industry is independent consultants? Why would you include them when I already qualified "full-time software engineers"?

adastra22 4y ago

Or work on a product that isn’t a 24/7 hosted service, and enjoy your evenings and weekends. I’ve never been on call, never will be, and it hasn’t impacted my employment.

morelisp 4y ago
The number of situations where this applies is pretty small though in employment % though, and probably shrinking. I'm curious what you work on. Most things boutique enough to eventually present a "fixed product" today are also usually high-end enough for someone to be doing 24/7 support.
- adastra22 4y ago
  I’m a research engineer at a innovation lab. HN skews the bias towards online startups. I’d wager most software engineers are not in such roles.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    I agree about HN's skew towards startup, but I think most full-time software engineers support businesses that are essentially available 24/7 or at least 12/7. Anything involving selling online, handling money, any kind of SaaS, or any company with worldwide customer support needs something, even if the main product engineers aren't aware of it (usually to the detriment of the people who are on-call). That's lots of startups, but it's also most blue chips or any kind of infrastructure. > I’m a research engineer at a innovation lab. I mean, assuming this is private, this is either an incredibly biased/exclusive or a very startup-economy-ish job itself. If your company is otherwise big enough to have a lab it's big enough there's on-call teams somewhere, and if you want to be a CTO/VP/DirEng/Architect you'd better know how they work.
    - adastra22 4y ago
      There are vast amounts of software engineering roles you are ignoring. Pretty much all of embedded firmware or hardware driver development. The entire video game industry excluding online play. The many software developers that provide solutions for enterprise software with 9-5 support contracts. Mobile app developers. Whole fields of consulting and integration experts that set their own hours. Pretty much every data scientist or machine learning role ever. It is online services that are niche. It's just what this website is mostly focused on so it seems more prominent.
      - morelisp 4y ago
        > Pretty much all of embedded firmware or hardware driver development. Any hardware used in something that has an on-call process, itself has an on-call process (or is from somewhere large enough to offer follow-the-sun support). As I said it may not involve the same engineers, but it's there. > The entire video game industry excluding online play. That's also a vanishingly small portion of employment in the games industry. > Mobile app developers. Again, most mobile apps are... for some kind of web service, or have some kind of backend, and so have some kind of on-call team. > The many software developers that provide solutions for enterprise software with 9-5 support contracts Examples? Just because not everyone is paying for the 5-9 contract, doesn't mean it's not there. > Whole fields of consulting and integration experts that set their own hours. Yes. What percentage of the industry is independent consultants? Why would you include them when I already qualified "full-time software engineers"?