Humane On-call
summary
Argues on-call needs concrete policies: treat fatigue like alcohol with fatigue management and recovery windows, expand rotation pools and recruit for on-call skills, and route alerts by recipient local time not UTC so people aren’t woken unnecessarily. Recommends operational changes that worked: 12 people across four regions enabling six-hour shifts once every three weeks and switching weekend coverage to half-weekend swaps, plus measurable SLAs, circuit breakers, actionable alerts, and explicit standby pay versus hidden compensation.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (16)
- 0:00On-call matters to everyone
- 1:48Legacy on-call systems
- 2:30Alcohol policies and fatigue
- 4:58Encore rotations dangers
- 6:45On-call pools and escalation paths
- 7:49Developers on alert front line
- 8:30Short on-call shifts
- 9:35Follow the sun model
- 11:27Global on-call team
- 13:13Complex on-call models
- 14:16Recovery time after on-call
- 16:01Circuit breakers for burnout
- 17:28SLA expectations reality
- 18:09Actionable alerts only
- 18:54Remediation prioritization
- 20:39Compensating on-call work
related talks
19mIts Time We Rethink On-Call Culture
16mHuman Centered On Call Practices
28mBuilding a healthy on-call culture
49mAgainst On-Call: A Polemic
35m“On-Call Is Ruining My Life” and Other Tales about Holding the Pager as an SRE
05mOn-Call in a World Full of Toil
26mPaid to Sleep
24mWait for Us! Evolving On-Call as Your Company Grows