Your First Shift

Getting ready for your first on-call rotation? Here’s what you need to do.

Before Your Shift Starts

1. Get Your Tools Set Up

Make sure you have everything installed and configured:

• Incident.io app on your phone (optional but recommended)
• Slack open so you can see incident channels and get notifications

2. Learn the Basics

Read through these quickly:

• On Call Process & Policies
• Tier 2 On Call Level Up Channel
• Incident.io - Get started as an On-call responder

This doesn’t need to be perfect. You’re building familiarity, not becoming an expert overnight.

3. Know Who to Contact

Who do I contact if I get paged and don’t know what to do?

• Contact the Incident Rotation Leader on Call

What Slack channels should I monitor?

• tier2-sme-rollout
• #tier-2-devops-rotation-swaps-amer
• #tier-2-devops-rotation-swaps-apac
• #tier-2-devops-rotation-swaps-emea

The Night Before Your Shift

• Check your schedule in Incident.io so you know exactly when you start
• Make sure your phone is charged and notifications are on
• Test Incident.io on your phone — Verify the app works

Your First Page

When you get paged, don’t panic. Here’s what to do:

Immediately

1. Acknowledge the alert in Incident.io (usually within 5 minutes)
2. Read the alert details — What service? What metric? What’s the threshold?
3. Join the incident channel on Slack (you’ll usually get a link in the page)

Next Steps

1. Say hello — Let people know you’re investigating: “I’m on this”
2. Look at dashboards — Check your monitoring platform to understand what’s happening
3. Read the runbook if one exists for this alert
4. If you’re unsure — Ask questions. “What have we tried?” “Is this customer-facing?”
5. Keep talking — Update the Incident Slack Channel every 5-10 minutes with what you’re finding

If You’re Stuck

• Ask in Slack for help
• Page domain specific Slack Channels if you are not familiar with the domain
• Don’t sit in silence debugging for 30 minutes — escalate earlier rather than later

Common Questions New On-Call Engineers Ask

“What if I break something while investigating?”

• You won’t. Your investigation tools (looking at logs, checking dashboards) don’t change anything. And if you need to make a change, you’ll have procedures documented (runbooks) to follow safely.

“What if I can’t figure it out?”

• Escalate. Your job isn’t to be a superhero; it’s to be available and engaged. Escalating to someone more experienced is exactly what you should do.

“What if I get multiple pages at once?”

• Work through them one at a time. Update your team on what you’re working on and what order you’re prioritizing them in. Contact the DevOps rotation leader to inform them in case they can gather additional support.

“What if an incident is still going when my shift ends?”

• Hand it off to the next on-call engineer with clear notes about what you’ve tried and what you’ve learned. We’ll cover handoffs in detail later.

Related Pages

• Understanding the Basics — Start here if you’re new to on-call
• Tools and Access — Get your tools set up before your shift
• Communication and Culture — Know how to communicate when paged