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OperationsDelivery5 min read
The on-call rotation for small teams
Small teams need to cover failures too, but copying big-company on-call burns people out. There's a humane middle path.
When you run systems that matter, someone has to be responsible when they break outside business hours. Big companies have elaborate on-call rotations for this. Small teams need coverage too, but copying the enterprise model with three people is a recipe for burnout and resentment.
Reduce the need before you staff it
The best on-call is the one that rarely pages. Before formalizing a rotation, invest in not needing it: make systems degrade gracefully, eliminate noisy alerts, and ensure most failures can wait until morning. Every page you prevent is worth more than any scheduling cleverness.
Make it humane
- Only page for things that genuinely can't wait — protect people's nights.
- Rotate fairly and compensate the burden honestly.
- Give whoever's on call the runbooks and access to actually fix things.
- Every page becomes a task to make that page unnecessary next time.
The best on-call rotation is the one that almost never pages. Fix the system before you staff the pager.