An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

Yeah On-call can vary greatly by company, although how On-call issues are handled can have a huge impact on your perception of a job.

At one previous employer, you were on a 2-week rotation for on-call.

But Every time you were on call, it was the same set of problems, always at the same inconvenient times (Mid sunday afternoon, random weekdays but always between 3-5AM, etc.) Admittedly often they were NOPs (Oh, alert came in, but when you check the system it's fine.)

But we didn't fix the false alarms. And we didn't fix the recurring real problems either; the Org's view was that was the entire purpose of the On-call person; that middle child you send to pay the loan shark not-quite enough because you don't care what happens to them.

At later employer, I actually had to deal with -more- on call issues, both in severity and frequency. And yet, I hate being on-call less, because at the very least when we find problems on-call the org puts a focus on fixing them.

I would read a book by this guy.

I worked at AWS. Your experience may vary significantly depending on which team you are in, either at AWS or plain-Amazon. Some people are having the time of their lives there. Some are working horrible hours, maintaining crap old code that they hate, and struggling with performance reviews that saps their morale and prevents them from seeking a better team or leaving the company. Some people genuinely like the competitiveness, the politics, and know the Leadership Principles like it's the law.

Amazon is a fascinating company, it's Big Capitalism in a way no other company is today, and as such it's writing History, for better or worse. For the average developer it's not great, though.

> Remember when I mentioned Amazon's moving and signing bonus? Little caveat on that, if you leave or are fired within 2 years, you have to pay it back.

Paying back a signing bonus if they fire you seems super rough. Is this common elsewhere? 2 years also seems high - the time I got a signing bonus, it was "pay back if you leave voluntarily in 1 year" which was much nicer than the described.

Unfortunately, much of this seems pretty common, especially months-of-crunch-time. Being able to figure out projects to avoid (if you're at a big corp like this where such things are possible), and being able to avoid them is a very good career skill to cultivate.

On-call can work quite well if the team has sufficient ownership to improve the underlying issues, not just keep the lights on. I've done this with good success. I'm often disappointed by how many managers and companies I've seen who don't get that aspect.

Believing too much in mantras like "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" can be dangerous, too, though. How well it works depends on the manager and the person scoping and planning the work. Another critical skill to develop to escape being the person doing the grunt work.

> After being on the team for a couple of months, I was put on the on-call rotation

I don't work at Amazon but the situation is very similar to my job. On-call can be brutal, even if there are no incidents during your week (which is rare.)

Just the fact that you have to be 24/7 _ready_ during a whole week sucks, especially when you have a family. During my on-call week, I can't go get groceries, I can't take my kid to her hockey practice, we can't go out for lunch over the weekend, etc.

It takes a toll, for sure.