On-call rotations spread the load fairly
Burnout comes from unpredictable, unshared paging more than from being awake at night. A rotation that is fair, well-handed-off, and rehearsed protects both the service and the people who run it. A job that is shared On-call work is a job that belongs to a team, not to one hero. A rotation turns ‘whoever was last awake’ into a defined roster and a schedule, so the pager load spreads across people and nobody burns out carrying the whole queue. The schedule itself — a weekly handoff, a backup/secondary on-call, a follow-the-sun structure across sites — is how you keep the obligation sustainable without letting it turn into a possession. Don’t let the urgency of tonight’s page decide who owns tomorrow; the rotation decides on purpose, ahead of time. ...