Has the firefighting stopped? The effect of COVID-19 on on-call engineers

In the wake of a digital transformation that has increased workloads for technical teams and on-call engineers, PagerDuty's report highlights the challenges of managing an average of 37 million daily events, with 61,000 deemed critical incidents. The period from March 2020 to March 2021 saw a significant increase in work hours, leading to heightened burnout risks, especially as interruptions during off-hours and weekends rose. The analysis reveals that smaller companies, often in hypergrowth, face more frequent disruptions than larger enterprises, exacerbating burnout and attrition risks during the ongoing Great Resignation. To mitigate these issues, organizations are encouraged to employ operational analytics to measure on-call workloads, reduce noise through intelligent alert systems, and use automation for incident resolution. As businesses adapt to an always-on environment, evolving from reactive to proactive incident management is essential to safeguard employee well-being and retain talent.