[fitnessrunner]

I've done on-call in a fairly severe fashion, similar to a lot of folks here - one one night, off the next, one one, off the next. I didn't get compensated for it. It took a tremendous toll on my mental and physical health. Fixing issues at 2AM is something you have to experience for yourself before you have any clout passing judgement on whether "everyone should do on call".

The interesting thing is that the majority of issues that came up were not necessarily bugs per-say, but rather, the hundreds of input sources our app consumed (algorithmic trading) frequently had bad data, so it was always a scramble to add fixes and stay on top of it, till the next bad input stream came in. It never ends!

I'm not sure if I've seen it proposed yet, but a better strategy IMHO is to have folks be "on call" while they are at the office. Then rotate to the next global office when they leave. If devs want to stay and go above and beyond, great. If your company needs to be 24/7, you need to staff it properly 24/7. Or be very upfront about the sleep deprivation requirements when hiring for it.