firstly, on call means supporting the entire service. not something in general I built.

secondly, many if not most of the issues that arise are part of some infrastructure automation or third party service or database. expecting me to be fluent in all of those to be useful in the hot seat is a pretty substantial investment and qualifies me to be an SRE on top of my other duties

thirdly, one major reason why my code might fail in production is that it wasn't sufficiently tested, probably because the service as a whole is basically untestable, and even if it were, building test and test infrastructure is likely not at all valued. in many places just filling in that hole would take a year.

onto to the fourth, the story is supposed to be that by operating the service, I'll be incentivized to fix automation and come up with solutions to make it more robust. I actually know how to do this, and every week I'm on call is time that I _dont_ spend doing this. furthermore, getting permission to do so is often like pulling teeth. sounds complicated. sure that would be nice, look at that when you have time in the indefinite future.

so what this often looks like from a development perspective is that I'm being paid to be a developer, I was judged based on my ability to be a developer, but at the end of the day I'm not building the service. I _am_ the service.

If you are on call for infrastructure, then I could understand not wanting to be on call. If I'm there, I'm on call for infrastructure as SRE.

I get all political reasons that your code may not work. However, refusing to be on call doesn't fix any of those reasons, it's just ignoring work. Flip side as SRE, I ask if Devs are on call. If they are not, I don't take the job because there is zero incentive for them to fix anything vs churn out 5 features, chuck it over the fence and be like "Ops problem now"

> but at the end of the day I'm not building the service. I _am_ the service.

I agree. For me though, it gives me pride to own my services and be fully accountable to the business, especially as part of a team with whom I build comradery, and of course our value to the business justifies our good compensation. It only works because we are empowered to make decisions that keep our on calls sustainable.