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Being on Call

tyler.kim

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Re: Being on Call

#111

Post by steveBK123 »

etripe wrote: post #69
goatinaboat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for logic then you don't understand how these organizations work The logic is that everyone must be replaceable on a moments notice because they might be shot and someone else will need to pick up that job. Having roles that you need to be intimately familiar with in order to be effective is the exact opposite of what the military needs. If a job can be done by someone with minimal training while de…

Even in offices, the myth is that everyone is replaceable at a moment's notice, because that is a comfortable thought for those in charge that makes it easier to play "4D chess" with the corporate pawns and integrate seamlessly with quarterly and yearly budgets. It's based on the law of averages and cements ending up with mediocre workers and products at best. Exceptional workers in key (non-management) positions wil…

Yes, a lot of this kind of "everyone is replaceable" 4D chess mentality of management leads to a fat middle.

I've seen this both at large, stodgy organizations that have frequent layoffs and at smaller organizations with Frank Underwood CTOs.

Bottom performers get managed out on the firms schedule, but top performers find their way out on their own schedule. This can lead to great chaos.. people getting un-fired, throwing money at the key man risks you accidentally created, and over-correcting with too-fast over-hiring which then leads to inevitable future firings.

Re: Being on Call

#112

Post by steveBK123 »

bipson wrote: post #60

I don't understand the article on many levels... Is it supposed to be hyperbole? - Flatulence is not "you rotting from the inside" - I have friends that have (had) night-shifts back-to-back to a regular shift, and were on-call for for several nights a month. They never failed to answer the phone. They worked as the on-call doctor for a whole station in a clinic, not answering or not listening would have been disastro…

If you've actually never been on call, it's hard to understand the way the body responds without experiencing it really.

Having every other weekend cut short as you always need to be near a PC from 4pm Sunday...

The sheer terror of being woken up from a deep sleep after a long night of work just as you've finally fallen asleep...

Resigning yourself to not sleeping as you finally close out the call, full of adrenaline as you see the first glimmers of light in the sky...

Knowing the problem is the same problem as last week, last month, and that the causes are things outside your control (the 1 staffer in Asia being sick or on holiday, insufficient hardware CTO won't upgrade, bugs in orphaned upstream systems, political turf wars)...

etc

Re: Being on Call

#113

Post by hackbinary »

gambiting wrote: post #73
8fingerlouie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my contract allows for unpaid overtime Unless i was in serious financial trouble, or in a learning situation, i would never accept a contract that "allows for unpaid overtime". Most of the companies i know don't allow for "paid free time", so why should i give away my time for free to increase profits for the company ? The exception to this is of course "job salary", but i never accept those either unless i have a…

>>Unless i was in serious financial trouble, or in a learning situation, i would never accept a contract that "allows for unpaid overtime". At least in the UK the law specifically forbids working more than 48 hours a week, so it's pretty common to see contracts where you opt out of this regulation. Not because the company even intends to make you work overtime, but because if you happened to work more, even entirely…

You can also opt back into the working time directive.

Re: Being on Call

#114

Post by jmdeon »

dd_roger wrote: post #85
antihero wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what hellish sort of company is 9AM "late"?

There's no company policy mandating me to start that early yet I start between 7am and 7:30am, by 8am the office is mostly full. The earlier you start the more daylight left to enjoy at the end of the day. 9am really sounds awfully late. People who start at 9 don't enjoy their morning any more than I do. They just wake up later. And it forces them to stay longer in the evening while I'm out taking advantage of the ex…

>People who start at 9 don't enjoy their morning any more than I do.

I am a morning person which means I really treasure my morning coffee and jazz music and reading time. I wake up at 7am and enjoy two sweet hours of a cold, dreamy morning before starting work fresh at 9am.

I am a night person which means I really treasure my nightly herbal tea and hip hop music and comic book time. I take a hot shower at 10pm before wandering into bed sleepy at 10:45pm.

None of this is rigid but I just feel like you are making super subjective arguments about a person's choice in time to work and sleep and live their life.

Re: Being on Call

#115

Post by bob1029 »

devchix wrote: post #98

I carried a pager for a short while, pager, remember those? On-call weeks were hell, even when nothing happened. It's the expectation of getting the call, and the expectation that a system outside your primary domain of expertise will be down. I wasn't paid enough to weather the stress, and I don't think there's a hard number to suit every one. If I ever had input to how an on-call rotation should be handled, I'd mak…

I was also on pager duty with physical pagers many years ago.

The perspective I had was that it was a rite of passage for a systems engineer. I noticed that only the more junior engineers were on front-line duty. I believe the thinking was that by forcing junior engineers to go through pager duty, they would be much more diligent when they propose, create or approve changes down the road. Whether or not this is a perverse incentive which ultimately ruins productivity & team morale is a separate conversation...

We had a primary & backup who got paged at the same time (due to the financial implications of timing), so there wasn't a total sense of isolation. But, there was definitely that sense of helplessness when it turned out to be a problem in a totally different system (and country). Worrying about something going down definitely kept you on a tight leash with regard to WiFi and laptop accessibility. We did get a little wild with the wording on the policy. Some bars downtown had excellent WiFi, so when some of us were on call during Friday/Saturday we would just make sure we had a laptop in the car and pager on body. Definitely not the best situation to be in, but for some teams the amount of time you were on pager duty could be measured in years.

Re: Being on Call

#116

Post by tharkun__ »

znpy wrote: post #87
gambiting wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's the other thing. A lot of shops and agencies close at 5pm, so if your come in to work at 10am and work until 6pm? Everything is closed once you leave, good luck getting anything done after work.

If you come in at work at 10am you might have as well done that trip to the shop/agency before coming to work.

Unfortunately not because most shops in Germany opened at 10am. It's much better nowadays in that AG least grocery stores are open to 10pm.

Re: Being on Call

#117

Post by throwaway7033 »

antihero wrote: post #36
8fingerlouie wrote: post #35

We have our "ops" guys that monitors the environments, and a list of people for each system that is more or less always on call. Each service/job that is being monitored has a procedure/description for how to respond to failures, and if nothing else works, the people on the list gets a call. You're not required to take the call, but you get a fairly large sum of money if you do, meaning people usually take the call d…

In what hellish sort of company is 9AM "late"?

Our normal start time is before 9 am and many people start work much earlier; the company is on the Fortune 100 Best Places to work list.

Re: Being on Call

#118

Post by tharkun__ »

dd_roger wrote: post #85
antihero wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what hellish sort of company is 9AM "late"?

There's no company policy mandating me to start that early yet I start between 7am and 7:30am, by 8am the office is mostly full. The earlier you start the more daylight left to enjoy at the end of the day. 9am really sounds awfully late. People who start at 9 don't enjoy their morning any more than I do. They just wake up later. And it forces them to stay longer in the evening while I'm out taking advantage of the ex…

I would usually be able to make it to work by 9:00am. That's coz of when I could drop the kids off at school and then catch the train. Since covid they don't have morning supervision any longer. Thanks to covid the office is closed anyway but if it was open and they'd require even 9am never mind earlier, then my next words are "Bye bye".

That said even once Covid restrictions are over forget me coming to the office every day of the week. I enjoy my life way too much to let that be taken away again. Yes I moved out here by choice and chose to take the longer commute over city life, I do realize that. But I really don't get what the problem would be with just meeting at the office like once a week or whenever 'needed' with your team instead of being forced to go and partake in all the social banter that kills concentration.

Re: Being on Call

#119

Post by tharkun__ »

sdevonoes wrote: post #84
pc86 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've got testing, code reviews, QA, and CI/CD, Friday deployments should be totally fine.

The point is "Friday deployments" are not needed (unless we are talking about hotfixes). What's the use case? Can't it wait until Monday? Why are all in such a rush?

Because the company makes your rating/pay dependent on BS metrics that drive the wrong behavior, such as merging on Friday so that your cycle time isn't too high. Might mean a paycut. Friday deploy gone wrong? Fix the issue, issue another PR that is approved and also deployed in no time? You're the hero and your metrics are also awesome. Cycle time baby!

:(

Re: Being on Call

#120

Post by tharkun__ »

steveBK123 wrote: post #112
bipson wrote: post #60

I don't understand the article on many levels... Is it supposed to be hyperbole? - Flatulence is not "you rotting from the inside" - I have friends that have (had) night-shifts back-to-back to a regular shift, and were on-call for for several nights a month. They never failed to answer the phone. They worked as the on-call doctor for a whole station in a clinic, not answering or not listening would have been disastro…

If you've actually never been on call, it's hard to understand the way the body responds without experiencing it really. Having every other weekend cut short as you always need to be near a PC from 4pm Sunday... The sheer terror of being woken up from a deep sleep after a long night of work just as you've finally fallen asleep... Resigning yourself to not sleeping as you finally close out the call, full of adrenaline…

It depends on the environment. I have been in both types.

I have been in an environment for about 5 years where we Devs were on call for 7 days every month and a half-ish. This was with a business that saw traffic 24/7 with weekends and off hours being higher actually. I was called at 2am once and a couple times on a weekend and I didn't even have to open my computer. I was able to instruct the NOC in what a safe reboot procedure (that wasn't in their SOP) would be and it solved the issue. We had automated testing including performance testing with signoff required from the architect if we were too far off the baseline. This was an awesome environment to be working in and being on call was both easy money and if you ever did get a call you knew it was because something really went wrong.

Contrast that with my current environment where you couldn't pay me enough money to make me sign up for the on call rotation. Monitors that fire Pager Duty alerts multie times a day including nights. An absolute nightmare and many if not most of these self heal too.

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