The Flawed On-Call System in Big Tech and the Promise of AI
2025-03-18
This article explores the shortcomings of the on-call system prevalent in large tech companies. Drawing on personal experience, the author contrasts the approaches of big tech and startups in handling software issues. Big tech's incentive structures lead to declining software quality, making on-call a permanent fixture. The author argues that AI and machine learning can revolutionize on-call processes, for example, using LLMs to simplify logs, search for similar issues, and reduce the burden on engineers, thus increasing efficiency.
Development
On-Call