Pager Duty
Pager Duty / On-Call Duty
Pager duty refers to the responsibility of being available to respond to alerts and incidents, typically outside normal working hours. Named after the pagers that once delivered alerts.
Historical Context
Before smartphones, on-call engineers carried pagers-small devices that received numeric or text messages. The term "pager duty" persists even though modern alerting uses phones, Slack, and dedicated tools like PagerDuty.
On-Call Responsibilities
When you're on pager duty, you: - Respond to alerts within SLA (often 5-15 minutes) - Investigate and triage incidents - Fix issues or escalate appropriately - Document actions taken - Communicate status to stakeholders
Making Pager Duty Sustainable
For individuals: - Keep laptop/phone charged and nearby - Know escalation paths before you need them - Don't be afraid to ask for help - Take breaks between on-call shifts
For teams: - Reduce alert noise aggressively - Provide clear runbooks - Compensate on-call fairly - Rotate burden equitably - Review on-call experience regularly
The Modern Evolution
Today's best teams: - Use smart alerting to reduce noise - Implement self-healing where possible - Provide full context with every alert - Make on-call a learning opportunity, not a punishment