Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cure - Unionisation seriously
heh, I started searching on Spotify...
The album you’re looking for is called Disintegration, not Unionization.
Why should I do production support?
51–60 of 136 posts
Re: Why should I do production support?
#52At some large tech companies, production support as a software engineer does not seem to be a path to promotion, unless you are a junior level engineer. And yet, solving some of the bugs encountered in production environments, especially with a heterogeneous set of users, requires expert level knowledge of a particular software library. It is probably a great way to coast, so I hear.
It is probably a great way to coast, so I hear. Or to stagnate, depending on how you look at it
Coasting is just stagnation in a different reference frame.
Re: Why should I do production support?
#53Teams I've worked on have not had dedicated support staff, but rather engineers rotate 24 hour support duties on a weekly basis. I have always had mixed feelings about "on call". I dread my turn on the rotation because the imminent threat of a prod issue has a psychological impact on my entire week, even off hours, and usually for a day or two after. If everybody on the team feels that way, maybe it can act as a forc…
The engineers at the organization I just departed (at least the ones in the support rotation which did not include me) got paid in both money and extra time off for their time spent on support tasks.
I find myself both applauding that and shrinking away thinking “perverse incentives”.
What I want is to run an engineering organization as if you should never have to call us. And if you do you either get chewed out for making a frivolous call, or we’re falling all over ourselves because that thing that is happening should definitely not be happening and we’ll be looking at how to keep that from ever happening again, again.
Re: Why should I do production support?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should a company hire two lines of support to shield an engineer from bugs they introduce?
1. Not every support request is the result of a bug. 2. Not every bug is directly related to the product owner/team. Bugs can be introduced from different teams/processes. 3. Requiring senior engineers to do L1 and L2 support is likely a misallocstion of resources when less senior people can handle those issues.
4. Engineers have a bad habit of renegotiating scope in front of the customer without realizing they’ve done it.
Re: Why should I do production support?
#55Re: Why should I do production support?
#56You don't get anything out of burning out. You just burn out. And that time is not coming back. This post seems like an apologist talking. Production support alone is not that much of a problem. What the author skipped (conveniently? or forgot to mention?) is - it's really the "on call" phenomenon that's the problem. The "typical" on-call - where when you are on-call you are magically on-call 24x7. Yes, during your s…
Having worked in the tech sector for a while now, having burned out once, and having been on-call 24x7 far more than is healthy, I would say exploitation is the name of the game to a lot of managers.
You are less of a person and more of a means to an end. A tool to achieve something, and some tools are disposable. It can be of career advantage to a manager to burn out engineers. Maybe instead of spreading 24x7 on-call across 3 teams in three timezones, you put it on 1 team in 1 timezone. By doing so a manager can achieve a lot with less resources, and hopefully secure their own elevation up the corporate ladder before the cost of their strategy becomes evident.
The cost of burn out I think remains hidden, in technology there's a constant flux of staff anyway, teams being being created and dissolved, in all the noise a few people being exhausted and bailing from the company is hardly noticed. Perhaps they said something before they left, but it's best for everyone in middle management if the burnt out individual is labeled the problem, they were a bad culture fit you see, a grumbler who didn't have what it took.
Re: Why should I do production support?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cure - Unionisation seriously
The cure - proper labor law. Seriously
Historically, I don't think we've made much progress in terms of pro-worker labor laws without said workers first having to get together to create bargaining power. By default the power is in the hands of the ruling class, and they have no interest in handing out paid holidays, reasonable working hours, or sick leave.
Re: Why should I do production support?
#58Re: Why should I do production support?
#59You don't get anything out of burning out. You just burn out. And that time is not coming back. This post seems like an apologist talking. Production support alone is not that much of a problem. What the author skipped (conveniently? or forgot to mention?) is - it's really the "on call" phenomenon that's the problem. The "typical" on-call - where when you are on-call you are magically on-call 24x7. Yes, during your s…
Burning out from on-call comes from not being able to fix the underlying causes.
I'm happy to hold the pager if I've also got the right to block/rollback deploys until the system is stable - my current job has had two out-of-hours pages in the past year, and we're in the alexa top 10k so it's not like there's no traffic.
Re: Why should I do production support?
#60You don't get anything out of burning out. You just burn out. And that time is not coming back. This post seems like an apologist talking. Production support alone is not that much of a problem. What the author skipped (conveniently? or forgot to mention?) is - it's really the "on call" phenomenon that's the problem. The "typical" on-call - where when you are on-call you are magically on-call 24x7. Yes, during your s…
I think there's only one way to solve this — which I've been unsuccessfully advocating for at my current company — and that is paid voluntary on call schedules.
It creates an actual market for on call work where engineers can simply say no to the extra cash if they don't like work taking up their nights and weekends. If the company is having trouble with no engineers wanting to be on call the pay is simply too low and needs to be increased. It's a job like any other and should be compensated as such.
In the end I honestly believe it will be beneficial for the company not having engineers burn out so quickly. Compensation also clearly sets the expectations — if you're being paid to do it you'll take it more seriously.
Just my 2 cents