[dotgov]

I'm sorry that happened to you, I was stuck in a place with a similarly unstructured on-call schedule and it equally made my life hell. It felt like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head, unfortunately there was no support structure or understanding of the fact that on-call is not a substitute for architecture.

I left. The colleagues I left behind could handle the situation better than me and still work there. And I don't fault them either, the on-call schedule as well as how it was run was defined by management. Down the line that experience made me violently advocate for my current team not to be on-call, and with a bit of luck and support I was able to pull it off. The result was demonstrably more stable services and a team that can spend more time on high value work. Which is to say: change is possible. Sometimes.