On-Call Rotation Fairness

Even distribution.

Key metrics

Pages per engineer per quarter.

Off-hours pages per engineer.

Total page-minutes per engineer (duration matters as much as count).

Targets

Within 20% across engineers in the same rotation. Sustained variance beyond is imbalance.

Off-hours pages: less than 30% of total per engineer. Consistent off-hours skew warrants investigation.

Page-minutes: most relevant metric for actual workload.

Addressing imbalance

Reshuffle rotation. Different shift patterns; different pairings.

Compensate outliers. Time off, stipends, recognition.

Fix underlying causes. Noisy services; insufficient staffing; poor handoffs.

Quarterly review

Per-engineer metrics. Outliers explained or addressed.

Long-term trends. Persistent imbalance over multiple quarters is structural.

Action items with owners. Address root causes; don't just rotate harder.