An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

Re:An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015) by dudul on Thursday May 21, 2020 @03:43PM (#23263954)

Your "in practice" doesn't match my on call experience over the past 15 years. During "on call" workload is reduced (the author of the post even mentions it). There are ways to implement sane on call policies that benefit everyone. A few I've seen:

- use a primary and secondary on call so that the primary can still go get groceries, or play in the yard with their kids, etc - overlap on call and work hours. I did that at a job and I was fine with working 6pm - 2am just to cover this time slot. Won't work for everyone, but may be a nice compromise for some.

Like everything else, there are ways to do it right, and way to go complete bananas with it.

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Re:An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015) by nighthawk454 on Thursday May 21, 2020 @04:14PM (#23264435)

> Like everything else, there are ways to do it right, and way to go complete bananas with it.

Sure, agreed. Sometimes it's implemented well and sometimes it isn't. I've experienced some of both.

When it isn't well-implemented and is particularly non-critical, it can feel a bit dystopian to the engineers. If done well and for a good cause, it should be fine.

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