[toomuchtodo]

Leave.

Speaking only of your situation, your company isn’t going to appropriately comp you for the on call burden, and they’re going to string you along (“we’re working on it”) as long as they can. If you stay, you will continue to suffer, and unless your comp is exceptional, it doesn’t appear to be worth it.

They might change after enough folks burn out and/or leave, but that’s not within your control. Your quality of life is within your control.

[bostonsre]

Yea, definitely agree. I've had murderous oncall shifts at some companies where the expectation was to just deal with it. Life is short. Bad oncalls affect your health and happiness. You can only do so much to change your org from the bottom rung. Look for a solid company that invests in improving the app enough and one where you can be happy.

[hinkley]

If you don’t already know at least four things that are being worked on, nobody is “working on it”.

We do rotations, two shifts. I spend at least two days a month working on alert prevention or faster recovery. So does my whole team. If anything big happens, I’ll spend four to six days (I tend to volunteer for resiliency work. My standards are higher, and I can actually talk about human factors instead of staring blankly or blamecasting).

So while other things are being “worked on” I can almost always name three of concrete ones we’ve done recently.

[ymnska]

You might be onto something there (and indeed that might be the inevitable result in this case), but it always feels a little icky to just use the nuclear option without trying to affect change. Even if I go, the rest of obedient-but-very-likable team would be left slightly worse off.

[ljm]

It's not the nuclear option. Put your feelers out, see if you can get a better job that you like the sound of, and then leave.

_That_ is how you effect change when your management and leadership is comfortable with the status quo, and if the colleagues you're fond of are too loyal to the company for their own good, maybe it's the kick in the ass they need.

Beyond that, your mental wellbeing isn't going to withstand the pressure of taking on a burden you don't appreciate so that your colleagues don't have to suffer as much.

[tjalfi]

You can change your organization or change your organization. The latter is often easier.

[dustinmoris]

The nuclear option is the only option which normally brings change when enough people make use of it. Everything else is just kicking the can down the road, but nobody will ever pick it up.