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[Sysadmin] Routing to null

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  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    I've got management on call but it's what on call is actually supposed to be, I take rotation duties with other people, it's infrequent, I always know when it is, and I get paid.

    What is this I don't even.
  • dporowskidporowski Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    bowen wrote: »
    I'm looking for a software engineer job that doesn't have on call and it's wild that this is still a thing for software.

    Eh. Think of Netflix, right. You got your client devs, server devs, database monkeys, network ops... Massive, massive infrastructure, with a full team for each major platform. (Web, Android, Apple, Comcast box stuff, etc.)

    If your Apple devices suddenly start barfing on something on the weekend, you don't have time for someone to "figure it out", since it could be any bloody number of things in any number of systems. Much better to bother the buggers what wrote the particular vomiting widget and have them tell you exactly why it's barfing. Could be anything from "a server deploy 4 days ago finally hit a state the clients don't like" to a client bug that only happens on every other odd Saturday, to something your content providers just fed into the system looked and processed like perfectly fine video, except SURPRISE, your HLS playlists have some weird error in them AVPlayer really hates!

    Sure, your NOC can say "this thing is alerting" and go look up a runbook, but the particular devteam in question will as a rule be able to figure out what's fucked faster, even if (like with a client team) they can't fix it right then.

    Edit: Now that's not to excuse "shitty" on call, like that time in my life I spent multiple years on it and as a result developed a nervous twitch when I hear a phone. Just saying it's not illegitimate entirely as a concept to go page the people what know things.

    Edit: I definitely do not work at Netflix. They like layoffs. I do not like layoffs.

    dporowski on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Netflix can absolutely afford to hire people to work after hours.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Imagine having actual on-call

    instead of your employer just refusing to hire helpdesk staff to cover business hours

    and putting their sysadmins "on call" to answer the normal day to day helpdesk tickets

    Man what I wouldn't give to have a helpdesk again.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    I've got management on call but it's what on call is actually supposed to be, I take rotation duties with other people, it's infrequent, I always know when it is, and I get paid.

    Yeah that's cool and all but it just doesn't jive with my lifestyle anymore. I've gotten big into doing outdoors shit and I can't do it when I'm glued to a phone once a month. If it was once a year in the dead of winter, maybe I'd be okay with being on call. But that means I legit am literally given the phone once a whole year, not that there's 1/52 weeks a year of getting a call because without fail whenever someone says "we never get called!" I always get inundated with stupid calls when it's my turn.

    "oh you must be unlucky!" yeah well that doesn't make it not fucking blow chunks bud.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    At the MSP I work for, we have a weekly oncall rotation. Every friday someone takes the oncall phone until the following Friday. When I first got hired back in 2013, I'd be oncall once every month and a half or so. It was never that big of a deal because we didn't have many clients who worked when we didn't. Major emergencies were pretty rare. Since then the company has grown quite a bit and I'm only oncall about 3 weeks a year. They give us a $250 bonus for being oncall too. My last oncall I only got a few calls and most of them were simple like rebooting a firewall or resetting a password. It would be nice to not have to be oncall but the system we have isn't that bad. We certainly don't get enough after hours calls to warrant a dedicated employee to the task.

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Even every month or so is bad for me. Like I like to do things with my friends and scheduling around them and on call is nearly impossible. Once every 3 months for a few days is like my threshold on that.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    I'm basically the only person who is on-call and I also don't get paid a red cent for when I get called nor do I get standby pay.

    I will grant you that I go out of my fucking way to make sure shit doesn't hit the fan so that I'm not getting calls, and reducing our footprints in certain industries has helped a lot, so I will very, very rarely get called (I think I got called once last year), but it throws a wrench into my brain and I'm a fucking wreck for the next 48 hours at least when it happens.

    Like, I have ADD, anytime I get interrupted doing literally anything you might as well fucking run and hide because I'm pissed now and I want blood. Interrupt me doing something fun and enjoyable in my time off and you better just fucking kill me it's the only way to be safe.

    However....

    If my job was literally only to ever respond to on-call shit and not have to sit at my desk for 9 hours a day to do 2 hours of work I'd probably change my attitude about on-call work considerably.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Yeah when it's just you, you know how everything works too, you can fix things in seconds and you know exactly when and why shit would break... when you're part of a team if some dickwad fucks something up and its your turn to be on call, guess who gets called.

    At least when you own the equipment and stuff in its completeness it's an entirely different ballgame to an on call rotation on a team of 10. I don't like either situation. The team of 10 can absolutely hire a single person to sit graveyard shift instead.

    The only way this changes is if we push back on it but for some reason IT folks are almost universally like "eh it's not that bad!" but it's fucking stupid and awful you've just been conditioned to agree to it and let it encroach on your time.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • twmjrtwmjr Registered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    Yeah when it's just you, you know how everything works too, you can fix things in seconds and you know exactly when and why shit would break... when you're part of a team if some dickwad fucks something up and its your turn to be on call, guess who gets called.

    At least when you own the equipment and stuff in its completeness it's an entirely different ballgame to an on call rotation on a team of 10. I don't like either situation. The team of 10 can absolutely hire a single person to sit graveyard shift instead.

    The only way this changes is if we push back on it but for some reason IT folks are almost universally like "eh it's not that bad!" but it's fucking stupid and awful you've just been conditioned to agree to it and let it encroach on your time.

    in my experience the bolded doesn't actually help the problem - at least not significantly. usually the person who works the graveyard shift doesn't match the experience/ability of the folks there during the day...if they did, they'd probably be working a day job somewhere. it throws a buffer in between for truly stupid stuff, but someone usually ends up getting called anyway when anything over the most basic of issues show up.

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    twmjr wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    Yeah when it's just you, you know how everything works too, you can fix things in seconds and you know exactly when and why shit would break... when you're part of a team if some dickwad fucks something up and its your turn to be on call, guess who gets called.

    At least when you own the equipment and stuff in its completeness it's an entirely different ballgame to an on call rotation on a team of 10. I don't like either situation. The team of 10 can absolutely hire a single person to sit graveyard shift instead.

    The only way this changes is if we push back on it but for some reason IT folks are almost universally like "eh it's not that bad!" but it's fucking stupid and awful you've just been conditioned to agree to it and let it encroach on your time.

    in my experience the bolded doesn't actually help the problem - at least not significantly. usually the person who works the graveyard shift doesn't match the experience/ability of the folks there during the day...if they did, they'd probably be working a day job somewhere. it throws a buffer in between for truly stupid stuff, but someone usually ends up getting called anyway when anything over the most basic of issues show up.

    Yeah I don't want to be bugged by basic stuff.

    All hands on deck situations are unique enough that it's whatever because it's not just going to be the person on call at that point. It's going to be several people from several teams. Those are generally rare. Resetting logins or caches or firewalls are stuff I still get bugged about that anyone can do and I don't want to have to sit next to a phone to do it.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    In my experience, the experience bridge is best handled by having the person who works the after-hours shift work 2-4 hours at the end of the daytime shift, dip their toes in and get advice from the day shift, and then work 4 hours into the evening, then go home.

    Speaking purely from an ISP perspective, there's really no cause for someone to be there after 9 PM. At that point if something breaks, nobody has a weird expectation that someone's going to fix it at that hour. I can see how that might be different at MSP's and hospitals and such.

    We don't even do that anymore, because we don't have a help desk, and as the guy who sets policy around here, my policy is that if the sun is setting, nobody's climbing, so uh if you're calling in after 5 you can leave a voicemail and I can spend time with my wife without having my phone go off for stupid shit.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    In other news I guess we're going to maybe be eschewing linux for windows soon so I got some decisions to make about my career anyways!

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    Yeah when it's just you, you know how everything works too, you can fix things in seconds and you know exactly when and why shit would break... when you're part of a team if some dickwad fucks something up and its your turn to be on call, guess who gets called.

    At least when you own the equipment and stuff in its completeness it's an entirely different ballgame to an on call rotation on a team of 10. I don't like either situation. The team of 10 can absolutely hire a single person to sit graveyard shift instead.

    The only way this changes is if we push back on it but for some reason IT folks are almost universally like "eh it's not that bad!" but it's fucking stupid and awful you've just been conditioned to agree to it and let it encroach on your time.

    Well, not only that, but when you're solo, you can just fix the problem and move on.

    After hours problems are one thing. But when I have teammates bugging me like Fry in Futurama ("fix it fix it fix it fix it") and people asking stupid questions the next day, not to mention management who insist on doing postmortem meetings, it becomes this branching fractal of bullshit.

    "Hey feral, a printer in HR is jamming.is this because the accounting application server crashed last night?"

    "Feral, let's talk about the application server crash. We need to determine a root cause, and an action plan to prevent this from happening again. Also, please document the steps you did to fix it so the rest of the team can learn."

    *shoots self*

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    Yeah when it's just you, you know how everything works too, you can fix things in seconds and you know exactly when and why shit would break... when you're part of a team if some dickwad fucks something up and its your turn to be on call, guess who gets called.

    At least when you own the equipment and stuff in its completeness it's an entirely different ballgame to an on call rotation on a team of 10. I don't like either situation. The team of 10 can absolutely hire a single person to sit graveyard shift instead.

    The only way this changes is if we push back on it but for some reason IT folks are almost universally like "eh it's not that bad!" but it's fucking stupid and awful you've just been conditioned to agree to it and let it encroach on your time.

    Well, not only that, but when you're solo, you can just fix the problem and move on.

    After hours problems are one thing. But when I have teammates bugging me like Fry in Futurama ("fix it fix it fix it fix it") and people asking stupid questions the next day, not to mention management who insist on doing postmortem meetings, it becomes this branching fractal of bullshit.

    "Hey feral, a printer in HR is jamming.is this because the accounting application server crashed last night?"

    "Feral, let's talk about the application server crash. We need to determine a root cause, and an action plan to prevent this from happening again. Also, please document the steps you did to fix it so the rest of the team can learn."

    *shoots self*

    OMG they just started having me do post-mortems this year and it's so fucking dumb, literally none of them have any technical acumen at all.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • twmjrtwmjr Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    Yeah when it's just you, you know how everything works too, you can fix things in seconds and you know exactly when and why shit would break... when you're part of a team if some dickwad fucks something up and its your turn to be on call, guess who gets called.

    At least when you own the equipment and stuff in its completeness it's an entirely different ballgame to an on call rotation on a team of 10. I don't like either situation. The team of 10 can absolutely hire a single person to sit graveyard shift instead.

    The only way this changes is if we push back on it but for some reason IT folks are almost universally like "eh it's not that bad!" but it's fucking stupid and awful you've just been conditioned to agree to it and let it encroach on your time.

    Well, not only that, but when you're solo, you can just fix the problem and move on.

    After hours problems are one thing. But when I have teammates bugging me like Fry in Futurama ("fix it fix it fix it fix it") and people asking stupid questions the next day, not to mention management who insist on doing postmortem meetings, it becomes this branching fractal of bullshit.

    "Hey feral, a printer in HR is jamming.is this because the accounting application server crashed last night?"

    "Feral, let's talk about the application server crash. We need to determine a root cause, and an action plan to prevent this from happening again. Also, please document the steps you did to fix it so the rest of the team can learn."

    *shoots self*

    "How are we going to prevent this problem from happening again?"

    problem happened because someone typed something incorrectly; I guess we have to shoot them and it'll never happen again idk

  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    Sometimes I can't help but laugh at our wide variety of experiences. I've always done really large orgs and not having a post mortem is anathema to me. If you don't do a post mortem the org gained nothing from a break.

    What is this I don't even.
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    I legitimately like writing up post mortems, I'll take any chance I can get to getting to the tippity-tappeting and my emails and wikis and proposals I type up are proof enough of that (I am not concise at all!).

    However, they are very dumb, as nobody learns anything from them because nobody other than me and my #2 can decipher them.

    Generally speaking they are very verbose reports of "We fucked up" and the proposed path forward is "fuck up less"

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    Sometimes I can't help but laugh at our wide variety of experiences. I've always done really large orgs and not having a post mortem is anathema to me. If you don't do a post mortem the org gained nothing from a break.

    In theory they are fine. Sometimes they're good.

    I find that a post-mortem after a security incident is always a useful practice, because it leads to real constructive action, which may include HR having a firm talking-to and/or scheduling a security training refresher for a human being who made an error.

    Post-mortems after non-security outages are hit and miss. Mostly miss. (In my experience.)

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Thawmus wrote: »
    I legitimately like writing up post mortems, I'll take any chance I can get to getting to the tippity-tappeting and my emails and wikis and proposals I type up are proof enough of that (I am not concise at all!).

    However, they are very dumb, as nobody learns anything from them because nobody other than me and my #2 can decipher them.

    Generally speaking they are very verbose reports of "We fucked up" and the proposed path forward is "fuck up less"

    The part I hate the most is "please document the steps you did to fix it so the rest of the team can learn."

    It's detective work. You follow the clues. Read error logs. Don't know where the error logs are? Try reading documentation, or poking around the installation directly, or doing a filesystem search for filenames containing "log." Look in Event Viewer. What are you looking for? Errors. But you have to make a judgment call whether the errors are relevant. Sometimes the errors are a red herring. Learn to separate systems by component - is the web server working? The SQL server? The licensing server?

    You learn this stuff by practice. I can help people along, but documenting it is pointless. You might as well be documenting how to run a 100-meter dash and expect somebody to refer to that document while playing QWOP.

    Management has to be willing to put less-experienced people on an outage, while I sit back and watch them make mistakes and fuck around and I gently coach them. They have to learn to figure things out for themselves, so I can't just feed them answers. That also means being willing to stomach an outage for longer. Sure, I might fix something in 30 minutes that will take somebody else 1-2 hours, but if you keep going to me, I get overloaded while nobody else gets any better.

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    It just goes back to the myth that you can have a functioning IT department by hiring people who know nothing about IT and getting the experienced ones to "document" and "transfer knowledge"

    Documentation and knowledge transfer are important, but you have to be relatively within the same realm of experience. A textbook on calculus does no good to somebody struggling with basic algebra.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    There are technical problems where a post mortem works.

    Then there are people problems where it does absolutely nothing. People make mistakes, you cannot use technology to fix people problems, much to my current boss' chagrin.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • AiouaAioua Ora Occidens Ora OptimaRegistered User regular
    You can fix people problems with technology.

    It just usually involves making changes the rest of the business doesn't want to do or pay for, since it mostly involves removing people from the processes entirely.

    life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
    fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
    that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
    bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Generally that becomes a money issue rather than a tech issue. For the ones that kill an entire platform, it's because the business cheaped out on some key component and got lazy because nothing ever happened.

    "This is just a prototype, we'll make it more error resistant when it goes into production" and then they never look at it again.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    In terms of root-cause analysis, most tech issues are money issues.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    I do like to snap back at my boss about those "well if you gave me a larger budget I could probably eliminate that problem. Maybe quadruple what it is now?"

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • shadowaneshadowane Registered User regular
    As a software developer, I understand being on call for our systems as a lot of it stuff I wrote. The fact that my company gives us nothing for it, doesn't seem to actually care that we have to do it, and that other teams don't have as much on call because they are bigger or their systems don't matter is what annoys me. When shit really hits the fan, I just take time off as a result, but even when stuff is running normally, I still get random pages sometimes.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    The on call debate, in my opinion, goes back to the concept that when smartphones and easy remote access became a thing in the mid 2000's that a lot of companies went "oh my god this is great we can reach anyone at any time!" which promoted 24/7 availability of employees, which too many employees decided was ok because the concept was really cool that you could just get your work email wherever you were with a smartphone. So employers took advantage of that.

    There are absolutely industries and companies that need to have 24/7 support, but too many employers think they do when they really don't. It really just comes back to to push against employees always working, or being available to work all the time, especially as more of us are working from home now.

    I'm probably not alone 'round these parts but I'm a big, big, big believer in people starting their work day, working, and then ending their work day and not needing to think about work when that work day ends. If you truly need someone to be available on call, they need to be compensated as such.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    If I was paid for my on call time fairly I would have much less of a problem with it.

    That means, per hour for every hour I have that phone. Not if I take a call, my time is being sacrificed because I can't go to the movies, I can't go do things, I have to sit and wait. I might even be woken up while I'm sleeping.

    It's really not that unfair to expect to be paid my hourly, phone operators and secretaries still get paid to answer phones even if they don't ring. People still fight me that this is unfair because it's so expensive and yes that's the entire fucking point. Your multimillion dollar company can absolutely fucking afford it.

    A mom and pop tech shop probably can't afford it, sure. But they don't need on call either.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    If I was paid for my on call time fairly I would have much less of a problem with it.

    That means, per hour for every hour I have that phone. Not if I take a call, my time is being sacrificed because I can't go to the movies, I can't go do things, I have to sit and wait. I might even be woken up while I'm sleeping.

    It's really not that unfair to expect to be paid my hourly, phone operators and secretaries still get paid to answer phones even if they don't ring. People still fight me that this is unfair because it's so expensive and yes that's the entire fucking point. Your multimillion dollar company can absolutely fucking afford it.

    A mom and pop tech shop probably can't afford it, sure. But they don't need on call either.

    Well and what grinds my gears is that if you compromise for standby pay at a reduced wage if you don't take calls, but it gets upgraded to your hourly if you take a call, they still don't bite.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    There was a place that I worked at that we had this fight and it wasn't pretty. the C level wanted to be able to call IT on the weekend if they couldn't figure out something in Outlook or some shit.

    It was a crap request but came from leadership and we worked with HR to make a proposal on how it would work and came up with a decent compromise that had the on call person for the week getting a flat $x and then straight time for all time worked. I was really pushing for time and a half on top of the flat rate, but we figured the best way to get it approved was straight time.

    Execs scoffed at that and told us to pick one or the other and that even one or the other was being extremely generious because they didn't have to give us anything (which was technically true because our employment agreements were all written without the thought of on call so there was nothing in them either way, and HR confirmed that). Of our six person IT team at the time four no longer work there, including the IT manager, and me.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    The on call debate, in my opinion, goes back to the concept that when smartphones and easy remote access became a thing in the mid 2000's that a lot of companies went "oh my god this is great we can reach anyone at any time!" which promoted 24/7 availability of employees, which too many employees decided was ok because the concept was really cool that you could just get your work email wherever you were with a smartphone. So employers took advantage of that.

    There are absolutely industries and companies that need to have 24/7 support, but too many employers think they do when they really don't. It really just comes back to to push against employees always working, or being available to work all the time, especially as more of us are working from home now.

    I'm probably not alone 'round these parts but I'm a big, big, big believer in people starting their work day, working, and then ending their work day and not needing to think about work when that work day ends. If you truly need someone to be available on call, they need to be compensated as such.

    Yes to all of this, but also, on the flipside, if my employer wants me to just have my job attached to my hip, I don't need to be in the fucking office or at my desk all day anymore, do I? This availability thing should have become a 2-way street but it isn't. I should have the freedom to fly to Japan and see the cherry blossom festival and still be on the clock and respond to tickets and support calls with as much access as they want to me and my time. It should have dissolved the office and it wasn't until we had a global pandemic that people figured out we could do that with 20 year old technology.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    The on call debate, in my opinion, goes back to the concept that when smartphones and easy remote access became a thing in the mid 2000's that a lot of companies went "oh my god this is great we can reach anyone at any time!" which promoted 24/7 availability of employees, which too many employees decided was ok because the concept was really cool that you could just get your work email wherever you were with a smartphone. So employers took advantage of that.

    There are absolutely industries and companies that need to have 24/7 support, but too many employers think they do when they really don't. It really just comes back to to push against employees always working, or being available to work all the time, especially as more of us are working from home now.

    I'm probably not alone 'round these parts but I'm a big, big, big believer in people starting their work day, working, and then ending their work day and not needing to think about work when that work day ends. If you truly need someone to be available on call, they need to be compensated as such.

    Expectations of constant availability also enable poor reliability and poor contingency planning. It promotes the creation of fragile systems (both technical systems and human systems) with single points of failure.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    twmjr wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    Yeah when it's just you, you know how everything works too, you can fix things in seconds and you know exactly when and why shit would break... when you're part of a team if some dickwad fucks something up and its your turn to be on call, guess who gets called.

    At least when you own the equipment and stuff in its completeness it's an entirely different ballgame to an on call rotation on a team of 10. I don't like either situation. The team of 10 can absolutely hire a single person to sit graveyard shift instead.

    The only way this changes is if we push back on it but for some reason IT folks are almost universally like "eh it's not that bad!" but it's fucking stupid and awful you've just been conditioned to agree to it and let it encroach on your time.

    Well, not only that, but when you're solo, you can just fix the problem and move on.

    After hours problems are one thing. But when I have teammates bugging me like Fry in Futurama ("fix it fix it fix it fix it") and people asking stupid questions the next day, not to mention management who insist on doing postmortem meetings, it becomes this branching fractal of bullshit.

    "Hey feral, a printer in HR is jamming.is this because the accounting application server crashed last night?"

    "Feral, let's talk about the application server crash. We need to determine a root cause, and an action plan to prevent this from happening again. Also, please document the steps you did to fix it so the rest of the team can learn."

    *shoots self*

    "How are we going to prevent this problem from happening again?"

    problem happened because someone typed something incorrectly; I guess we have to shoot them and it'll never happen again idk

    The below scenario happened to us 18 months ago:

    Engineer: "Operator, shut down oil system 2"
    *action*
    Operator: "I shut down oil system 1"
    *cue machinery failure sounds*

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Thawmus wrote: »
    wunderbar wrote: »
    The on call debate, in my opinion, goes back to the concept that when smartphones and easy remote access became a thing in the mid 2000's that a lot of companies went "oh my god this is great we can reach anyone at any time!" which promoted 24/7 availability of employees, which too many employees decided was ok because the concept was really cool that you could just get your work email wherever you were with a smartphone. So employers took advantage of that.

    There are absolutely industries and companies that need to have 24/7 support, but too many employers think they do when they really don't. It really just comes back to to push against employees always working, or being available to work all the time, especially as more of us are working from home now.

    I'm probably not alone 'round these parts but I'm a big, big, big believer in people starting their work day, working, and then ending their work day and not needing to think about work when that work day ends. If you truly need someone to be available on call, they need to be compensated as such.

    Yes to all of this, but also, on the flipside, if my employer wants me to just have my job attached to my hip, I don't need to be in the fucking office or at my desk all day anymore, do I? This availability thing should have become a 2-way street but it isn't. I should have the freedom to fly to Japan and see the cherry blossom festival and still be on the clock and respond to tickets and support calls with as much access as they want to me and my time. It should have dissolved the office and it wasn't until we had a global pandemic that people figured out we could do that with 20 year old technology.

    The problem is they want the control and abuse.

    There's generally someone who will deal with it because they're single an they don't give a shit and sit at home and play world of warcraft or league all night anyways so what's the harm in taking the phone if it means job security and a solid paycheck? I'm not trying to denigrate those people but anyone who compromises starts setting the expectation of the whole team's time.

    Every inch you give, everyone else has to give in kind because the bar has been lowered by you and you're now the base level of expectation for everyone else at your job or in the field.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • SeidkonaSeidkona Had an upgrade Registered User regular
    We teach others how to treat us.

    Mostly just huntin' monsters.
    XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
  • SeidkonaSeidkona Had an upgrade Registered User regular
    edited October 2021
    Seidkona on
    Mostly just huntin' monsters.
    XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
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