HACKER Q&A
📣 tkiolp4

I can’t do oncall rotations. Am I done as a SE?


Been working as a developer for enough time to put on my CV the word “senior”, and I’m looking for another gig. My usual tactic when finding a new job is:

- play their game: do countless interviews (phone, hangouts, pair programming, you name it) - excel in each part of the interview - once they know I’m a good fit for their company, I ask more than they usually pay for whatever the role I am applying for. Sometimes I ask for more vacation days or other similar perks

Now, I have to say that my tactic has worked out so far so good. Recently, though, I have been hitting a wall: oncall rotations. I reject any kind of work besides the usual 9-5; it’s nonnegotiable for me. I don’t need more money (it’s not that I’m earning a lot either), but even if I would needed it, I would prefer to work “harder” (smarter?) during the usual 9-5 hours.

The stress of potential incidents occurring during the night or on weekends gives me anxiety and no amount of money can fix that. Unfortunately, companies these days require senior software engineers to be oncall from time to time because, well, their culture says so, or something like that (“In this company every team owns their products from conception to deployment and maintenance. We expect from engineers to have a business mindset, to be proficient using a variety of tech stacks, and to be there to keep the software up and running in case of unexpected failure”).

Is this a trend or I just got bad luck in my recent findings?

Edit: sector is web development.

  👤 jilX Accepted Answer ✓
It’s not that I want you to do on-call, I want you to be responsible for the work you do and feel the pain when it doesn’t work so you _fix_ the root causes of incidents (or at least automate mitigations).

The biggest threat to my company was the developers not fixing the problems they created. Yes, culture problems and “feature factory”, but this is part of how you fix those. (Of course you also need management support for above, super important to look for.)

There shouldn’t be on-call burnout with the above because you have agency to improve the problems. Matched with the situation continually improving and compensation for incidents. (Realistically the target is always moving and emergent behaviours will happen but this should still lie in the range of being reasonable, given a sufficiently large team among other things).

👤 imhoguy
Some options:

- contracting/consulting - quite often no on-call duty as it is tricky to bill,

- working on software for brick&mortar businesses, such who usually overlap with your work hours,

- working in R&D area where you don't touch prod, where there is a dedicated team who does the integration, deployment and prod support - often quite popular in big organizations with long release cycles etc.

👤 tra3
I think it’s fine to set boundaries. I joined an organization and 6 months in was invited to a meeting (with 30 other devs) to discuss our onboarding to prod support on the weekends and such. I politely refused and held firm. I’ve done enough of that that I never want to do it again.

It’s still an employees market out there. Find something that fits.

👤 f0e4c2f7
Situations like these are where recruiters can actually be really helpful. When looking for work with specific qualities I usually open up LinkedIn and start responding to recruiters thanking them for reaching out and explaining the type of work I'm looking for.

There are definitely senior dev jobs with no oncall. I think a lot of developers feel the same way you do. Perfectly reasonable stipulation.

Chances are you've just run across a few in a row that do oncall. When you get on a streak with something like that it can feel like it's every job.

👤 LurkingPenguin
> Unfortunately, companies these days require senior software engineers to be oncall from time to time because, well, their culture says so, or something like that...

What type of companies are you applying at (industry, size, etc.)? What is your geographic location?

There are tons of companies in the world that employ SEs and I know plenty of SEs who are not required to do on-call rotations. In fact, I've never heard of this being common.

I suspect your experience might be a function of what type of companies you're applying to and perhaps where they're located.

👤 Raed667
A company that forces on-call on its devs is a huge red-flag.

Good companies incentivize for it and don't need to force it upon anyone.