[MrJohz]

That does not sound like normal work for a software engineer. That sounds more like you have found an unusually bad workplace. Why are you changing out tools every few months? Why are you working overtime for free? Why is there only one person who knows how to fix things when they break (especially if that happens so regularly that you have one person who "normally" fixes it)?

[tayo42]

> Why are you working overtime for free?

Thats what oncall is, every job ive seen makes you do it

[MrJohz]

Apparently this is an EU/US thing, because here overtime and on-call is always paid extra (as is essentially anything beyond your usual 40 hrs/week, or whatever you've got in your contract).

That said, I also see very few jobs that involve on-call. Maybe that's because companies know they have to pay extra for it and therefore don't hand it out willy-nilly, but typically there'll be an ops team who do have on-call, and whose job is to triage and fix anything they can, otherwise just minimise the damage, and then maybe the most business-relevant couple of teams will also have an on-call rotation in case the problem can't be solved by ops alone.

Personally, I've never had on-call.

[dharmab]

The other two are dysfunctional but in the US, SWE are pretty much universally classified as exempt and legally aren't entitled to overtime pay.

I see from your bio that you are based in a country with much better worker rights than the US.

[MrJohz]

Ah, if that's the case I can understand the argument a bit better, but maybe the article should then be titled "the insanity of being in one of the best-paid professions in one of the richest countries in the world, and still having poor working conditions".