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Breaking Up with On-Call

reflector.dev

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Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#171

Post by parpfish »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #155
gosub100 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a union it would demand a bunch of unqualified people join my team (and get paid the same as me) and it would forbid me from doing certain things because,say, moving the computer or plugging in a cable is IT 's job, whereas I'm SE . No thanks

Aren't hackers supposed to be a curious bunch? Is that really the only way you can imagine unions working? Can you not see the imbalance of power between a single individual and the corporation that employs them? Unions are fundamentally about balancing that power dynamic.

i'm a big union advocate, but i worry that the traditional messaging that unions use doesn't work for tech employees.

things like more pay/better hours/safer working conditions are appealing to people working low-paid, dangerous jobs but don't really click with most tech employees because those aren't the things they hate about their work.

to win over tech employees unions should talk about more ambitious things like codetermination (i.e., getting workers on the board), 4-day work weeks, remote work policies, employee sabbaticals, etc

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#172

Post by jjtang1 »

dakiol wrote: post #62

For me the worst thing about being on-call is not the actual work outside business hours (it’s usually not much), but the potential work: if something happens I need to jump into my laptop within X minutes (changes from company to company, but it’s usually within 10 minutes). This means: I cannot go for a run, I cannot go to the movies, I cannot go for a dinner with family, I cannot even go shopping (shopping mall is…

>Most of the software I wrote requires mostly no interference or fix-ups, unless of course the requirements have changed

Bug-free software is great, but changing requirements are precisely the reason on-call needs to exist.

Even if you have a whole team of engineers who write bug-free software like this guy, you'll still have failures. Because the world is constantly slipping out from under your assumptions.

Customers never stop changing their usage patterns. They add load at different rates, come up with unexpected requests of all shapes and sizes, and invent new use cases that fly in the face of the original project requirements.

Even if you have created a software system with no bugs that perfectly meets both the functional and non-functional requirements of the project, changes in the state of the world vis a vis customer behavior will come along and change what counts as a bug. If your system has a blanket 60-second database query timeout, and everything's working fine, then there's no bug. But as soon as a new API usage pattern causes certain queries to run on average 10 times longer than before, now you have connection starvation and an urgent bug to fix.

I'm not saying that "timely maintenance and improvement" and "a culture of perpetual ownership" won't have positive effects on reliability. But it's unrealistic that any amount of responsible, careful software development will fully eliminate the occurrence of sudden and unexpected failures. Human on-call, as uncomfortable as it is, will remain a requirement as long as reliability is taken seriously.

FWIW my perspective is that of someone that runs an on-call/incident management platform (Rootly).

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#173

Post by bobbiechen »

dakiol wrote: post #62

For me the worst thing about being on-call is not the actual work outside business hours (it’s usually not much), but the potential work: if something happens I need to jump into my laptop within X minutes (changes from company to company, but it’s usually within 10 minutes). This means: I cannot go for a run, I cannot go to the movies, I cannot go for a dinner with family, I cannot even go shopping (shopping mall is…

I agree. The potential work is worse than the actual work. I used to think it wasn't so bad, but then I was so relieved when I left the on-call rotation that I must have been suppressing my feelings about it.

I wrote about my experience here: https://bobbiechen.com/blog/2022/7/20/being-on-call-sucks

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#174

Post by gosub100 »

viraptor wrote: post #162
gosub100 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So my coworker who was a UAW member who told me stories about sleeping on the roof, and being reprimanded for moving a desk to retrieve a pen...was trying to dupe me?

> While you will find some extreme examples that could go that far, I don't know how much more clear I could make it to you.

"while I should ignore evidence that contradicts what you claim..."

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#175

Post by doubled112 »

smitelli wrote: post #78
rwmj wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why people used to be paid time-and-a-half or even double-time for being on call. Ask your union to demand that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-and-a-half

Fun fact: In the US the concept of time-and-a-half (also minimum wage, and not hiring child labor) was created by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Most tech employees are classified as "exempt" -- the FLSA and its protections doesn't apply to them.

In Ontario, Canada, IT workers are exempt from most labour laws too. Breaks, shift lengths, time off between shifts, etc. No overtime pay either.

What this means is that on call is often "included in your salary" and good luck.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#176

Post by nijave »

whstl wrote: post #59
nijave wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely an issue but I think there's a little room for push back. Work done outside normal working hours is automatically the highest priority, by definition. It's helpful to remind people of that. If it's important enough to deserve a page, it's top priority work. The reverse is also true (if a page isn't top priority, disable the paging alert and stick it on a dashboard or periodic checklist)

You're right, but it's still outrageous that engineers need to burn political capital in order to have proper sleep and avoid burnout.

Agreed.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#177

Post by anal_reactor »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #151
anal_reactor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why on-call is normal. It's a huge mental burden on employees, which is especially an important issue in modern times of widespread mental issues, just so that some shitty mobile app can be available 24/7/365. If your business is important enough to have on-call, then you should have dedicated employees covering night shifts and nothing else, effectively limiting it to someone's office hours, effec…

> If your business is important enough to have on-call, then you should have dedicated employees covering night shifts and nothing else, effectively limiting it to someone's office hours, effectively removing on-call. Easy to say when you envision it as someone's office hours and not your office hours. If my employer gave me a choice between a normal shift plus oncall or a night shift with no oncall, I'd pick the on-…

Night shift fan here

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#178

Post by gopher_space »

gosub100 wrote: post #159
gopher_space wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you getting all of your thinking from one co-worker?

So I should ignore evidence directly from the source of one of the largest unions in the US, because it doesn't support your view? I should only accept evidence from your trusted sources? Ok. Edit: or my UPS friend who told me how the union box loaders would falsely claim alcoholism or drug addiction before being fired so they could abuse the union "protection" that was given to them? Is he trying to dupe me too?

Think about your own employment experience. Was the work environment always static, or did your employer ever introduce change that wasn't popular? Were you still singing the corporate anthem afterwards?

As far as I can tell, unions only show up after decades of management malfeasance. They're kind of a natural reaction. The line "the only thing worse than a union is no union" is probably a hundred years old.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#179

Post by inetknght »

ekimekim wrote: post #65
dakiol wrote: post #62

For me the worst thing about being on-call is not the actual work outside business hours (it’s usually not much), but the potential work: if something happens I need to jump into my laptop within X minutes (changes from company to company, but it’s usually within 10 minutes). This means: I cannot go for a run, I cannot go to the movies, I cannot go for a dinner with family, I cannot even go shopping (shopping mall is…

When I'm in charge of an on-call rotation I always try to make it very clear that this is not the expectation. In my preferred model of on-call, you have a primary, then after 5min an escalation to secondary, then after 5min an escalation to something drastic (sometimes "everyone", sometimes a manager). The expectation is that most of the time you should be able to respond within 5 minutes, but if you can't then that…

> The expectation is that most of the time you should be able to respond within 5 minutes

That's an unreasonable expectation unless it's clearly said in writing and is billable hours.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#180

Post by inetknght »

monknomo wrote: post #135
smitelli wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: In the US the concept of time-and-a-half (also minimum wage, and not hiring child labor) was created by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Most tech employees are classified as "exempt" -- the FLSA and its protections doesn't apply to them.

I have never understood why 'computer' workers are exempt

For the same reason that cashiers and burger flippers at fast food places have to sign non-compete clauses.

It makes everything cheaper.

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