Soft Skills Engineering

Episode 457: How do I get off the on-call rotation and "big tech" == "big leagues"?

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Apr 21, 2025
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ANECDOTE

Brutal On-Call Rotation Experience

  • A senior engineer describes their grueling first on-call rotation involving 12-hour shifts for 7 days, causing extreme exhaustion and health issues.
  • They suffered sleep deprivation, dizziness, and severe diarrhea from excessive energy drink consumption.
ADVICE

Advocate Shorter On-Call Shifts

  • Propose reducing your on-call shift duration to management citing risks like catastrophic mistakes from exhaustion.
  • Shorter shifts, such as three days, could lessen the physical and familial toll.
ADVICE

Pitch Improvements for On-Call

  • Develop a project plan to improve the fuzzy alarming system making on-call less manual and exhausting.
  • Discuss this with your manager to seek support for feasible improvements to the process.
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