Take this on-call rotation and shove it

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Broadcast analogy & article style

  • Some argue the article’s TV-broadcast example exaggerates the level of redundancy needed; backup generators and multiple studios are common, though not foolproof.
  • Others say quibbling over that misses the broader argument about on-call.
  • A few readers find the narrative and characters (e.g., “Alex the know‑it‑all,” Kafka digression) forced or rambling, calling it more cathartic rant than tight argument; others praise it as exceptionally well written and emotionally resonant.

Self‑employment vs corporate on‑call

  • Solo contractors describe being effectively on-call 06:00–22:00 for months, with severe pressure and real business risk, but note they’re directly rewarded and retain control over tradeoffs.
  • Contrast is drawn with corporate on-call where impact is minor (ads delayed, executives waiting) but pressure and job risk are high, with no extra pay and limited control.
  • Debate: some say this is fundamentally the same “you agreed to the package”; others say the key difference is agency and bargaining power.

Compensation, law, and regional differences

  • Many US tech roles have mandatory on-call with little or no added pay; anecdotes include token stipends and intense rotations at large companies.
  • European commenters describe laws that effectively force compensation and limit frequency (e.g., mandatory rest periods, stand‑by pay, 2–4× overtime rates, minimum billable blocks).
  • Some note this makes frequent paging expensive, pushing companies to improve reliability or adopt follow‑the‑sun coverage.
  • Unionized and public‑sector models (stand‑by rate + guaranteed hours when called) are cited as healthier patterns.

Burnout, PTSD, and lived experience

  • Multiple stories of anxiety, sleep disruption, and long‑lasting “pager trauma” (startle response to sounds, dread of alert tools) even years later.
  • People describe carrying laptops everywhere, planning runs and social life around 15‑minute response windows, and quitting jobs purely over on-call.
  • Some say just fighting against being put on 24×7 rotations caused burnout.

Quality, ownership, and incentives

  • One camp: on-call, when tied to the people who build the system, pushes quality up—alerts get tuned, automation and resilience improve, rollouts get safer.
  • Counter‑camp: management priorities (features over robustness) and perverse incentives mean engineers absorb pain without getting time or credit to fix root causes.
  • A recurring theme: systems are often legacy “boxes of compromises” with unclear ownership, making on-call feel like cleaning up everyone else’s mess.

Paying for on-call: 10× schemes and gaming concerns

  • Some propose very high multipliers (e.g., 10× hourly rate) for off‑hours work to both compensate and force companies to minimize incidents.
  • Objections: risk of incentivizing slow remediation or resistance to fixing recurrent issues; concerns about conflict of interest.
  • Others respond that trades already manage this with minimum billable blocks and performance oversight, and that deliberate sabotage would be grounds for firing.

Alternatives: shift work, follow‑the‑sun, MSPs

  • Shift‑based SRE/operations (including overnight shifts) is proposed as the clean alternative: 40h/week, explicit hours, no 24×7 tether on top of a day job.
  • Some still prefer flexible hours plus rare on-call; others say rotating day/night shifts are especially damaging.
  • Follow‑the‑sun teams across time zones and outsourcing to managed service providers are mentioned as underused options.

Coping strategies and resistance

  • Tactics from experienced engineers:
    • After every wake‑up, treat it as a defect and remove or automate that class of alert.
    • Re‑classify non‑critical alerts to business‑hours incidents.
    • Refuse or escalate when chronic noisy systems aren’t being fixed, though some warn this can lead to retaliation or firing in “at‑will” environments.
  • A few advocate intentionally half‑hearted after‑hours work to make the true cost visible; others argue the real fix is cultural and organizational, not individual sabotage.