Ask HN: Do you find working on large distributed systems exhausting?

Re:Ask HN: Do you find working on large distributed systems ... by m_herrlich on Saturday February 19, 2022 @09:14AM (#30397254)

I love building and developing software, and despite the fun and interesting challenges presented at my last job I quit because of the operations component. We adopted DevOps and it felt like "building" got replaced with "configuring" and managing complex configurations does not tickle my brain at all. Week-long on-call shifts are like being under house arrest 24/7.

I understand the value that developers bring to operational roles, and to some extent making developers feel the pain of their screwups is appropriate. But when DevOps is 80% Ops, you need a fundamentally different kind of developer.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you find working on large distributed systems ... by throwhauser on Saturday February 19, 2022 @09:57AM (#30397554)

After-hours on-call is a thing that needs to be destroyed. A company that is sufficiently large that the CEO doesn't get woken up for emergencies needs to have shifts in other timezones to handle them. I don't know why people put up with it.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you find working on large distributed systems ... by bckr on Saturday February 19, 2022 @12:35PM (#30398806)

Part of it is a culture that discourages complaining about after hours work.

There's an expectation that everyone is a night owl and that night time emergency work is fun, and that these fires are to be expected.

Finally, engineers seem to get this feeling of being important because they wake up and work at night. It's really a form of insanity.

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