<story><title>Giving a Shit as a Service (2022)</title><url>https://allenpike.com/2022/giving-a-shit</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dvt</author><text>Fundamentally disagree with this. In fact, most of human technology has worked without on-call rotations. From the complicated movements of mechanical watches, to the still-ticking heartbeats of the Voyager probes.&lt;p&gt;Most software engineers just happen to be bad engineers. On-call rotations are a band-aid for poor planning and development (to be fair, often imposed by tech-delinquent middle managers or executives).</text></item><item><author>somsak2</author><text>If you work at a company on a team with a user-facing surface, you need to have an on-call rotation. Consumer expectations of uptime are extremely high and there&amp;#x27;s no way to build software that ensures 100% reliability without any human intervention.</text></item><item><author>dvt</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;A lack of planning on your behalf, does not constitute an emergency upon mine.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Agreed. Imo, having &amp;quot;on call&amp;quot; rotations is a clear red flag and bad software practice that has somehow made it in the mainstream.&lt;p&gt;I understand the idea of &amp;quot;mission critical&amp;quot; when you&amp;#x27;re running software on the Moon or something, but if your Earthbound software has so many potential bugs that you need to have dedicated people being on call every weekend to fix bugs or restart servers, you just built it poorly.</text></item><item><author>ProllyInfamous</author><text>&amp;gt;expect to make a few friends and many enemies&lt;p&gt;The older I get, the less I&amp;#x27;m willing to help disaster scenarios.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A lack of planning on your behalf, does not constitute an emergency upon mine.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>squarefoot</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;if you&amp;#x27;re the only person that &amp;#x27;gives a shit,&amp;#x27; YOU&amp;#x27;RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Not only that (which is 100% true) but also you&amp;#x27;re raising the bar in required work quality for everyone else to get on par with you, therefore expect to make a few friends and many enemies, especially among colleagues.</text></item><item><author>ProllyInfamous</author><text>I always carry a two dollar bill and fifty-cent piece, for when (e.g.) an entry-level store-clerk does something which most-other-clerks wouldn&amp;#x27;t resolve, I can say to them &amp;quot;Thank you for giving. a . shit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;As a blue-collar electrician (although retired), I want to hire anybody that seems to give even the tiniest shit. While working, it took me a decade to realize that &amp;quot;if you&amp;#x27;re the only person that &amp;#x27;gives a shit,&amp;#x27; YOU&amp;#x27;RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>infecto</author><text>Fundamentally disagree with this but I can see how someone who thinks at the level of &amp;quot;Most software engineers just happen to be bad engineers&amp;quot; would see it that way.&lt;p&gt;I have worked at firms of various sizes and there is always a point where things usually become complex at some point. Software is as much or more so about managing the humans than it is the software. This becomes especially true as the firm grows in size. Like all fields there are certainly some individuals that perform better&amp;#x2F;worse than others but even for the best engineers out there, mistakes happen, edge cases pop up especially as the potential complexity grows. Of course these mistakes can pop up more frequently depending on the imposed deadlines. Deadlines to me are a healthy balancing act between the different parts of the business. Sometimes they are arbitrary but I think in a healthy relationship it helps to have that pushback&amp;#x2F;friction to figure out how much effort is required.&lt;p&gt;That was a long way of saying I think its a pretty naive and dismissive view to just hand wave and say this is both due to bad engineers and tech-delinquent middle managers. You are not asking for it either but I think this also comes down to social ability&amp;#x2F;skills. If your worldview is that most software engineers I can only imagine this shows up in the workplace.</text></comment>
<story><title>Giving a Shit as a Service (2022)</title><url>https://allenpike.com/2022/giving-a-shit</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dvt</author><text>Fundamentally disagree with this. In fact, most of human technology has worked without on-call rotations. From the complicated movements of mechanical watches, to the still-ticking heartbeats of the Voyager probes.&lt;p&gt;Most software engineers just happen to be bad engineers. On-call rotations are a band-aid for poor planning and development (to be fair, often imposed by tech-delinquent middle managers or executives).</text></item><item><author>somsak2</author><text>If you work at a company on a team with a user-facing surface, you need to have an on-call rotation. Consumer expectations of uptime are extremely high and there&amp;#x27;s no way to build software that ensures 100% reliability without any human intervention.</text></item><item><author>dvt</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;A lack of planning on your behalf, does not constitute an emergency upon mine.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Agreed. Imo, having &amp;quot;on call&amp;quot; rotations is a clear red flag and bad software practice that has somehow made it in the mainstream.&lt;p&gt;I understand the idea of &amp;quot;mission critical&amp;quot; when you&amp;#x27;re running software on the Moon or something, but if your Earthbound software has so many potential bugs that you need to have dedicated people being on call every weekend to fix bugs or restart servers, you just built it poorly.</text></item><item><author>ProllyInfamous</author><text>&amp;gt;expect to make a few friends and many enemies&lt;p&gt;The older I get, the less I&amp;#x27;m willing to help disaster scenarios.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A lack of planning on your behalf, does not constitute an emergency upon mine.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>squarefoot</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;if you&amp;#x27;re the only person that &amp;#x27;gives a shit,&amp;#x27; YOU&amp;#x27;RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Not only that (which is 100% true) but also you&amp;#x27;re raising the bar in required work quality for everyone else to get on par with you, therefore expect to make a few friends and many enemies, especially among colleagues.</text></item><item><author>ProllyInfamous</author><text>I always carry a two dollar bill and fifty-cent piece, for when (e.g.) an entry-level store-clerk does something which most-other-clerks wouldn&amp;#x27;t resolve, I can say to them &amp;quot;Thank you for giving. a . shit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;As a blue-collar electrician (although retired), I want to hire anybody that seems to give even the tiniest shit. While working, it took me a decade to realize that &amp;quot;if you&amp;#x27;re the only person that &amp;#x27;gives a shit,&amp;#x27; YOU&amp;#x27;RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dasil003</author><text>Obviously the truth is somewhere in between, there is no engineer so talented that they can produce a 100% reliable and available system, and the percentage goes down the more complex the system gets. The decision of whether to have a on-call rotation should be based on the consequences of downtime, not on some kind of moral stance on human fallibility.</text></comment>