Software Engineering Tidbits

Software Engineering Tidbits

Share this post

Software Engineering Tidbits
Software Engineering Tidbits
Noisy On-Call Rotations
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More

Noisy On-Call Rotations

Georges El Khoury's avatar
Georges El Khoury
Mar 22, 2022
4

Share this post

Software Engineering Tidbits
Software Engineering Tidbits
Noisy On-Call Rotations
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
Share

Noisy on call rotations with a lot of false positive alerts are doubly dangerous.

They ruin the morale of the engineering team and they drive engineers to ignore them, not take action on them and resolve them without properly following up or investigating.

Once you get in this state, it is crucial to exit it as soon as possible.

First, consider turning off paging alerts until you are in a healthier state. Second, it is important to dedicate engineering time to get the rotation into a healthy state with a streak of days without unnecessary alerts.


Software Engineering from the Frontlines Course on Maven

If you liked this article, I will be teaching a “Software Engineering from the Frontlines” course on Maven where I will teach hard-learned lessons I acquired developing large-scale products at companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Microsoft.

View Course


Thanks for reading Software Engineering Tidbits! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Peter Belán's avatar
Ali B's avatar
4 Likes
4

Share this post

Software Engineering Tidbits
Software Engineering Tidbits
Noisy On-Call Rotations
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
Share

Discussion about this post

User's avatar
A good unit test
A good unit test should be:
Feb 20, 2023 • 
Georges El Khoury
18

Share this post

Software Engineering Tidbits
Software Engineering Tidbits
A good unit test
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
5
A good way to debug
One of the best software engineering tip I received is a good way to debug.
Apr 28, 2022 • 
Georges El Khoury
16

Share this post

Software Engineering Tidbits
Software Engineering Tidbits
A good way to debug
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
2
Outage Management
Outage management is a core skill for a software engineer to acquire and is critical to achieve high availability of an online service.
Feb 13, 2023 • 
Georges El Khoury
13

Share this post

Software Engineering Tidbits
Software Engineering Tidbits
Outage Management
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
3

Ready for more?

© 2025 Georges El Khoury
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share

Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More

Create your profile

User's avatar

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.