I have had the privilege of doing pager duty with a great team. Some of the things that made the experience great were: 1. Six people rotation. You need to put

I have had the privilege of doing pager duty with a great team. Some of the things that made the experience great were: 1. Six people rotation. You need to put your personal life on hold for the duration of pager duty, make it as spaced out as possible. 2. The person on-duty had veto power over any deployment past 3pm in the afternoon. 2.b The person on-duty had veto power over any deployment on Fridays (24x7 means pager duty last the whole weekend). 3. Every person in the roll was a developer familiar with the systems. We had first responders - spread across timezones doing "follow the sun" scheme - taking care of the simple stuff, but when push come to shove, you need qualified people at the wheel. On the other hand, I have done horrible shift work. While each situation is different, there are two common themes: Lack of proper training and understaffed team. The very worst of all was when management tried to solve the later inflicted the former upon two unrelated teams that found themselves having to support systems they knew almost nothing about. I don't know what was worse, the utter feeling of panic that came with every ticket of the other system, or the quiet despair of coming to office on Monday morning and finding out what sort of chaos had spawned out of your under-qualified peer's meddling.