Recently reorged, asked to join unrelated oncall

Question

I have been reorged , and now I have a completely new org, team tech stack and domain to my previous role so I’m still settling in and feeling a bit uncomfortable.

I get the impression the space I have been assigned to didn’t go well last half, I see a few recently deactivated profiles and hear some mumurs

I’m feeling that need to start well but someone on the team came from a pretty unrelated project, migrated a lot of it to the infra my new org maintains but has asked me to join the on call for the old system that didn’t get migrated.

This was in the team meeting and I pushed back a bit saying this doesn’t feel connected enough to my role but he said it was good for the company and my manager seemed to support this.

Learning this entirely different system in addition to what my org doesn’t feel like a good use of my time and it’s good for the company line feels like a weak justification, there are a lot of on calls that are good for the company right?

Is this normal ? Should I push back again in my 1:1 with my manager? I’ve only just started reporting to him and he will be my skip once he hires an m1 for my team so don’t have a great read on him yet

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

You can totally push-back, but the phrasing matters. Focus it more on the impact on the team rather than what's better for you.

I am happy to take on the on-call, but I did want to raise that it's an area I'm unfamiliar with and will take me some time to be effective.

I'm more excited about the project X, which feels more aligned to our current team goals and has more upside.

It'll help also if you do a bit of digging into the on-call and how busy it is. Could you estimate how many alerts you get, and which team may be better equipped to handle this?

Remember, fixing an on-call could also be an opportunity: [Case Study] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project

Recently reorged, asked to join unrelated oncall

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