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Comment by lars_francke | Hacker News Reader

Shameless question tangential related to the topic.

We are based in Europe and have the problem that some of us sometimes just forget we're on call or are afraid that we'll miss OpsGenie notifications.

We're desparately looking for a hardware solution. I'd like something similar to the pagers of the past but at least here in Germany they don't really seem to exist anymore. Ideally I'd have a Bluetooth dongle that alerts me on configurable notifications on my phone. Carrying this dongle for the week would be a physical reminder I'm on call.

Does anyone know anything?

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A candy bar cell phone, paid for by your employer and handed to whoever is on call. People who don't want it can just forward it to their phone.

in this case a satellite enabled candybar. the disaster recovery policy and budget should be applicable here. make sure its able to share xg and satellite tunnel for maximum value. ensure the reporting system is satellite enabled also. added points if its sending alerts 2 your handy byod. Disaster recovery is a big deal in 2024. All sorts of factors make satellite redundancy valuable in todays reality: Coworkers on a hike or a boat, random 0-day stuff, and war can cut your normal internet.. i have experienced all of these and only in the last 4 years and more than 1 time on each topic. Train your users to destroy it in case of war as its trackable by military tech. Put a sticker on it. Check out stackexchange for questions like this tho?

Yup, this is something we've thought about as well. We're a remote company so everyone would need to get their own but this option is definitely on the table.

This really sounds like a _you_ problem and not something you need hardware to fix.

You can already enable silence/focus time bypass modes for apps like PagerDuty and such…

If you can’t develop some sense of responsibility to check if you’re on-call, frankly you have no business being in an on-call role.

No hardware will make you or your engineers more diligent. The only reason pagers made more sense than phones is/was because of protocol reasons NOT because it’s some separate device.

Wow, stackoverflow vibes here.

Yup, this is absolutely a "me" problem. Life just gets in the way. I'm on call, the kids ask to go to the pool, I leave my phone in the locker forgetting that I'm on-call. I visit friends, forget to bring my laptop etc.

I realize it's a "me" problem and therefore I'm looking for a solution. Others in the company have the same problem. That said: This is my very own company and I have a great sense of responsibility but I also have a shit-ton of other things in my head and I'm not the only one with this issue here.

The silence etc. bypass doesn't always work (I commented in another thread).

There are phone apps that can pierce through all silent or DND settings. Get one of those. If the same app could buzz on less than 50% battery to remind to charge that would help. Also same app could request to confirm on call status so the don't forget. If they don't confirm someone else gets the shift.

OpsGenie has that. We use it at my job. I'm not sure what problem OP is having. The phone call, text message, and app alert from OpsGenie are more than enough. The notification configuration is extremely flexible and each user can customize it as needed. From a user perspective, I don't know what else you could want.

I have no affiliation with OpsGenie outside of using at work.

We have OnePlus users with issues: https://support.atlassian.com/opsgenie-android/docs/troubles...

And we have one user with another brand that also locks down the notification/alert settings and kills apps in attempt "to save battery" which can't be controlled.

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