4 ms·

Or maybe page your managers, such that they can escalate the situation. They will be more aligned on solving the cultural problems if they get waked up too.

by whazor 2y ago

aray07 2y ago
yeah the best managers i worked with used to be on the same on-call rotation such that they would also get paged every time. That helped build empathy and visibility into the situation.
- Too 2y ago
  Wouldn't the manager of one team be part of every shift in such a setup?
blitzar 2y ago
Or maybe page your managers, such that they can fire you
- jobtemp 2y ago
  Then... problem solved!
anitil 2y ago
I have half-jokingly suggested that an out-of-hours page should cost the company $10k to incentivise actually fixing problems rather than releasing broken products. But I haven't thought of a way of getting around the perverse incentive to create bugs in order to get the $10k
- lupire 2y ago
  The cost is the cost of paying you to fix outages on overtime pay instead of working on the product.
  - hackeman300 2y ago
    Overtime pay? Is this common for oncalls? Never gotten it myself, every time I ask they reply with "just take the time back on another day" as if my time is fungible. Weekend time is worth far more to me than weekday time
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      Some companies do on-call bonuses, overtime pay for on-call incidents, or other schemes. In my experience, it’s not a net win. They’ve budgeted the same amount for compensation either way, so you’re probably getting lower base comp if they’re allocating some of it for on-call. It also creates an atmosphere where on-call becomes more normalized, because you’re getting paid extra to do it. Some people, usually young single people, will try to milk the overtime for as much as they can, dragging out the hours spent doing on-call work because every extra hour spent on the problem makes their paycheck bigger.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  One company I worked for introduced a trivial ($100 or something) gift card bonus for closing a certain number of bug tickets. The number of people who started pushing code with subtle bugs so they could create a ticket for it, fix their own bug, and get closer to that $100 gift card was shocking to me. I can’t imagine the chaos that would occur if something came with a $10K bonus attached. Some people will bend over backward to get even tiny rewards. Dangling a $10K reward would get the wheels turning in their heads immediately.

Or maybe page your managers, such that they can escalate the situation. They will be more aligned on solving the cultural problems if they get waked up too.

by whazor 2y ago

Or maybe page your managers, such that they can escalate the situation. They will be more aligned on solving the cultural problems if they get waked up too.

aray07 2y ago

yeah the best managers i worked with used to be on the same on-call rotation such that they would also get paged every time. That helped build empathy and visibility into the situation.

Too 2y ago
Wouldn't the manager of one team be part of every shift in such a setup?

blitzar 2y ago

Or maybe page your managers, such that they can fire you

jobtemp 2y ago
Then... problem solved!

anitil 2y ago

I have half-jokingly suggested that an out-of-hours page should cost the company $10k to incentivise actually fixing problems rather than releasing broken products. But I haven't thought of a way of getting around the perverse incentive to create bugs in order to get the $10k

lupire 2y ago
The cost is the cost of paying you to fix outages on overtime pay instead of working on the product.
- hackeman300 2y ago
  Overtime pay? Is this common for oncalls? Never gotten it myself, every time I ask they reply with "just take the time back on another day" as if my time is fungible. Weekend time is worth far more to me than weekday time
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    Some companies do on-call bonuses, overtime pay for on-call incidents, or other schemes. In my experience, it’s not a net win. They’ve budgeted the same amount for compensation either way, so you’re probably getting lower base comp if they’re allocating some of it for on-call. It also creates an atmosphere where on-call becomes more normalized, because you’re getting paid extra to do it. Some people, usually young single people, will try to milk the overtime for as much as they can, dragging out the hours spent doing on-call work because every extra hour spent on the problem makes their paycheck bigger.
Aurornis 2y ago
One company I worked for introduced a trivial ($100 or something) gift card bonus for closing a certain number of bug tickets. The number of people who started pushing code with subtle bugs so they could create a ticket for it, fix their own bug, and get closer to that $100 gift card was shocking to me. I can’t imagine the chaos that would occur if something came with a $10K bonus attached. Some people will bend over backward to get even tiny rewards. Dangling a $10K reward would get the wheels turning in their heads immediately.