The 7:00 AM Phone Call

Tags: programming life

I much prefer the infamous 3:00 AM phone call to any 7:00 AM phone call. I don’t particularly enjoy either, but I appreciate the gravity of any situation that warrants a phone call at 3:00 AM.

7:00 AM phone calls are often prompted by something strange that the early guy spots after getting in to the office long before anyone else. Although the situation usually warrants attention, it most often does not warrant waking anyone.

Three people on my team were called at 7:00 AM today because a scheduled report didn’t run at the normal time because of heavy load on our reporting server. Transactions were still processing. and the report was eventually delivered. My team was up late last night doing scheduled maintenance long after normal business hours to reduce impact and provide a high level of customer service. We were all a little perturbed to get wake up calls over a relatively minor issue after a long night.

Some folks are night owls because they get their best work done at night. Others are night owls because their work can only be done at night. The early birds can keep their worms, I only ask that they consider the night owl’s schedule before picking up the phone at 7:00 AM.