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Your theory doesn’t work… otherwise why managers are not on-call? You’ll say “because they cannot fix shit if needed”, but the real reason is: on-call sucks, yo

Your theory doesn’t work… otherwise why managers are not on-call? You’ll say “because they cannot fix shit if needed”, but the real reason is: on-call sucks, you cannot force managers to do it, but you can force engineers. I’m in the same situation as OP, and it seems they and I, we are just normal professionals who care about their career, but are not willing to sacrifice our scarce free time in exchange for more money or whatever.

mousetree 4y ago
Why do you think the real reason is not “because they cannot fix shit if needed”. Seems the most reasonable to me.
- tkiolp4 4y ago
  At least in my experience, managers (engineering managers, sorry for not being more explicit. I didn’t mean product managers or similar) have a good number of years of experience as software engineers before turning into managers. They are not clueless about the products we built and maintain. So, even if junior engineers are on-call, why on earth an engineer manager with over 10 years of coding experience cannot be on call as well? In my experience, the answer is: because being oncall is shit, and upper management cannot force middle level managers to be on call.
  - tra3 4y ago
    Sounds reasonable but misses the mark, sorry. Once you become a manager you rapidly lose hands on skills. The big picture never goes away, but the details go pretty quick. If you don’t use, you do lose it.
jhoelzel 4y ago
Strong maybe on that from my side. It really depends on where you work. But in every startup I have worked with and have been on call, there was quickly at least a middle manager joined to see if he can provide something of value (in most situations he will for instance call other teams members as needed or coodinate with teams in other timezones). I think, in the end, it's a bit of both, you need to care about the product to actually do it, but you are also correct in that the tradeoff has to be worth it.
aristofun 4y ago
> Your theory doesn’t work… otherwise why managers are not on-call First it’s not a theory but observations. Many of them. Second, i dont see how your argument refutes the theory if it was a theory? Managers may and in fact are usually on call from what I personally have seen. They just have different type of oncall within their areas of competence, and it’s often bat called “oncall”.

mousetree 4y ago

Why do you think the real reason is not “because they cannot fix shit if needed”. Seems the most reasonable to me.

tkiolp4 4y ago
At least in my experience, managers (engineering managers, sorry for not being more explicit. I didn’t mean product managers or similar) have a good number of years of experience as software engineers before turning into managers. They are not clueless about the products we built and maintain. So, even if junior engineers are on-call, why on earth an engineer manager with over 10 years of coding experience cannot be on call as well? In my experience, the answer is: because being oncall is shit, and upper management cannot force middle level managers to be on call.
- tra3 4y ago
  Sounds reasonable but misses the mark, sorry. Once you become a manager you rapidly lose hands on skills. The big picture never goes away, but the details go pretty quick. If you don’t use, you do lose it.

jhoelzel 4y ago

Strong maybe on that from my side. It really depends on where you work. But in every startup I have worked with and have been on call, there was quickly at least a middle manager joined to see if he can provide something of value (in most situations he will for instance call other teams members as needed or coodinate with teams in other timezones). I think, in the end, it's a bit of both, you need to care about the product to actually do it, but you are also correct in that the tradeoff has to be worth it.

aristofun 4y ago

> Your theory doesn’t work… otherwise why managers are not on-call First it’s not a theory but observations. Many of them. Second, i dont see how your argument refutes the theory if it was a theory? Managers may and in fact are usually on call from what I personally have seen. They just have different type of oncall within their areas of competence, and it’s often bat called “oncall”.