[pseudalopex]

Usually follow the sun support doesn't mean devs around the world working on the same things. That would be harder to coordinate for sure. A big enough company is probably better off hiring SREs instead of having dev teams where every meeting time is bad for someone. And a small enough company is probably better off outsourcing 24 hour coverage.

Why can't the on call people do dev work though? Having someone on call and on deadline isn't realistic. But there should be time between on call issues. And in most code bases there are things someone can work on without coordinating with the rest of the team every day.

[aij]

Google does hire SREs actually. It doesn't mean dev teams aren't on call also. But dev teams do get paged much less frequently.