[Perdition]

>I'm guessing that the intersection of "administrative personnel", "willing to carry pagers" and "understand the internals of AWS services" is a very small set

Being a non-engineer doesn't mean they don't know anything about the technology. And they don't need to know the internals, just enough to convey information from the engineers managers to the public.

Plenty of other organizations manage resolving issues while transmitting information about the issue to other stakeholders.

Also, most administrative personnel have far less job opportunities than engineers. If they can get the engineers to carry pagers they can get a PR minion to carry one.