First on-call rotation starts next week and I'm quietly terrified
Eight months into my first real job and I just got added to the on-call rotation. The idea of a page going off at 2am for a system I only half understand is already keeping me up.
What if I make it worse? What if I can't figure it out and have to wake someone senior? For those who've been on-call a while — what do you wish someone had told you before your first rotation? Does the dread fade?
2 comments
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AnonymousAnon The terror is normal and it fades after your first couple of real pages. Two things that helped me: (1) skim the runbooks before your shift so you know where things live, and (2) remember escalating is not failing — waking a senior at 3am for something genuinely broken is literally what the rotation is for. Nobody expects you to solo-fix everything on week one.
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AnonymousAnon The dread absolutely fades. Two things that helped my first rotation: read past incidents/runbooks before you're on so nothing is fully new, and remember that waking a senior at 2am isn't failure — it's literally what the escalation path is FOR. Nobody expects you to solo a Sev1 in month eight.