[yourapostasy]

> Is being on call really a sign of low status?

For all practical purposes, above a certain level of management, you are implicitly on call all the time. However, the bar to clear to engage you gets higher the further up the leadership layers you go. A manager of a handful of teams comprising about 100 staff gets engaged for less serious fires than the CEO, but both are "on call". It might take the board of directors chartering a helicopter to get to the CEO's fly fishing cabin during the CEO's vacation if a situation warranting such presents itself, but the CEO is absolutely on call 24x7x365.

The complexity of what engages the on call person I suspect is what connotes status. Called for clearing out disk space: low status. Called for application outage that has stumped multiple technical teams: higher status. Called for a production outage impacting the next day's C-level reports that requires engaging other management: higher status. Called for heading off a shareholder proxy battle: even higher status.

Note here complexity doesn't solely reside in the technical realm, but frequently is rather a blend of technical factors, social factors, and quickly making impactful decisions in low-information situations.