I agree. I think on-call is a big gotcha of the industry and different companies I've been at wildly succeed or fail at this. Some of it can be more team-driven even if corporate isn't on board.
Good-ish example:
- On-call T1 was mostly business hours
- T2 during off-hours/weekend
- Decently large rotation so you're on-call less frequently than every ~6 weeks
Bad Example:
- Escalation goes to another team that likely doesn't know much about the system
- T1 24hrs/day
- Small team so on-call is fairly frequent
Both of these are still not good examples though. There's no compensation for the on-call hours. The team in my "good" example recognized heavy on-call load and was okay with taking some time off after a heavy on-call week "off books" but that's flimsy at best.
I think this would be a great case for a union personally. Engineers have done very well but I don't think there's enough desire to fix this without a centralized coordinator like a union.
Good-ish example: - On-call T1 was mostly business hours - T2 during off-hours/weekend - Decently large rotation so you're on-call less frequently than every ~6 weeks
Bad Example: - Escalation goes to another team that likely doesn't know much about the system - T1 24hrs/day - Small team so on-call is fairly frequent
Both of these are still not good examples though. There's no compensation for the on-call hours. The team in my "good" example recognized heavy on-call load and was okay with taking some time off after a heavy on-call week "off books" but that's flimsy at best.
I think this would be a great case for a union personally. Engineers have done very well but I don't think there's enough desire to fix this without a centralized coordinator like a union.