[crpatino]

It is not as bad if you can rely on a strong team (3.5 years there, no significant consequences in personal life).

Some things that help:

1. Everybody is in the roll, not just the new guy(s).

2. The team is big enough for everyone to have a reasonable ratio of on-call vs off-call days. Merging two or more small teams into one single on-call roll of death does not count; people who is not knowledgeable on the problem at hand (e.g. everyone, eventually) will just fuck up and end up calling someone from the correct team anyways (after the problem has grown worse and the customer is angrier).

3. Team is encouraged to trade days or cover for each other if needed.

4. On-call guy has vetoe power over deployments. If you want to push something urgent at the end of the day, you better make yourself available to the guy that can vetoe your deployment.

5. Management understands that developer's productivity will slow down while on-call, and plan accordingly.