On-call responsibilities can severely impact a software engineer's health and family life, highlighting the need for better work-life balance strategies.
The career growth opportunities in big tech versus smaller companies vary, emphasizing that valuable experiences can be found in both environments when approached with an open mindset.
Deep dives
The Challenges of On-Call Duties
On-call responsibilities can significantly impact a software engineer's personal life and health. One engineer described their experience of monitoring a dashboard for 12 hours a day during an on-call week, leading to extreme fatigue and health issues. The stress is compounded by time zone differences, as the engineer had to adapt to Pacific Time while being based in the EU, resulting in working from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. This excessive strain not only affected their wellbeing but also strained family dynamics, necessitating a discussion on how to improve the on-call process for better work-life balance.
The Value of Experience in Varied Environments
The skills and opportunities for growth can vary widely depending on the work environment, be it a large tech company or a non-tech organization. Joining a big tech company may expose developers to sophisticated tools and complex problems already solved by experienced teams, while smaller companies often allow for greater personal ownership and creativity in projects. Developers can learn immensely from both contexts, as big companies provide stability and scalability, whereas smaller startups may involve taking on diverse roles and responsibilities. This diversity in experience contributes to overall career development, often making for well-rounded professionals who can thrive in various scenarios.
Navigating Career Growth and Expectations
The perception of needing to work at a big tech firm to grow one's career is common, leading to questions about the comparative talent levels between tech and non-tech companies. While big tech companies have higher hiring standards and may offer exposure to more innovative work, the reality is that many skilled developers exist in both realms. Continuous growth and learning can happen regardless of workplace size, as developers should focus on personal skill development and seek opportunities to collaborate with highly skilled peers wherever they are. Ultimately, valuable experience and learning can be found across different environments if approached with an open mindset.
In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
I am a senior software engineer in a big tech/faang company and this week is my first ever on call rotation. My team is doing a lot of CI work, monitoring pipelines and support queues during on call. It is probably not as much of a hassle as on call for product teams, but for me personally on call was the nearest I have ever been to hell.
Our on call is not the regular getting pinged when something goes wrong, instead we have to manually monitor a dashboard 12 hours constantly for 7 days as the alarming is quite fuzzy.
I am the only EU remote worker that has to adopt to the on call PST timezone. That means, my on call shift goes from 3pm-3am in my timezone. It is day 5/7 and I am down 24 energy drinks already, cause this was the only way to stay wake. Knowingly, that this would be just a short-term tradeoff against health, I am now living through the most explosive diarrhea I have ever had. On top, I am sleep derived, dizzy and every body part hurts.
That would already be terrible on its own, yet I additionally have a young family, with a 4 year old and a toddler. The on call week, has not only been though on me, but especially also on my children and wife. I don’t have time for the kids at all and my wife is doing 100% of everything at the moment, including waking up, breakfast, bringing our son to kindergarten, cooking, cleaning, playing, everything. She is also quite exhausted therefore.
Besides On Call, my job has been great and a huge monetary opportunity that is very rare in the EU, therefore quitting just because of 4-5weeks/year is not an option I am considering. Yet, I am wondering if there could be any way of smuggling myself out of the on call rotation. I have seen, that a staff level engineer on our team is not participating in the rotation, but that might be because he got a lot going on with other teams as well.
A listener named bebop asks,
Is your average “Big Tech” dev “better” than a random dev selected from a large non-technology company? I can’t help but feel that if I want to level up my career, I’m going to have to either move into big tech or some unicorn startup.
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