As an engineer you often have to do on-call – this means covering a release on a weekend, or working later during the week or starting early. Getting a release in on time and making sure it works.
Seemingly you have little choice in your organisation – you let your team-mates down, you let your boss down, you let their boss down.
An expectation flows through the company that if one person is on call, the rest need to be on call.
As engineers become managers this expectation remains. The most experienced engineers fix production issues. Managers get twitchy when the most experienced people aren’t available. The whole company becomes a reactive – on-call related company – rather than a place where there is control and expectation around release moments.
Do you continue on this path and never get your weekend back or do you do something about this? You have two choices.
You can either leave the company or you can change the expectation.
Both are possible.
The solution is up to you.