Paging Isn’t a Substitute for Planning

A few days ago, I found myself in a Slack thread about a code freeze that was lifted earlier than planned.

The change was part of a maintenance window, but someone wasn’t available to unlock things on time — so a page went out.
No outage, no system failure. Just coordination.

I asked whether paging was really the right call in that situation.
The response was that the maintenance was serious, and since no one was available, paging was the only option.
That moment stuck with me — not because of the page itself, but because of what it said about our culture.

Paging systems exist for one reason: to alert engineers when something has gone wrong.
A system is down. Data is corrupt. Customers are impacted. That’s the purpose.
But somewhere along the way, many organizations — including well-meaning leaders — start to blur the line between incidents and inconveniences.

When a page goes out for something predictable, like a maintenance window or mis-timed coordination, it’s not an operational issue anymore.

It’s a cultural one.

⚙️ The Purpose of Paging

Paging is an emergency response tool, not a coordination tool.

• Incidents are unplanned, business-impacting events that require immediate attention.
• Maintenance is planned work with clear expectations, owners, and timelines.
• Coordination gaps are mistakes — and should be fixed with communication, not escalation.

When we start paging people to compensate for process issues, we erode the meaning of what a page even represents.
A page should always mean: something broke, and we need you now.

🧨 When Paging Fills the Gaps

In that freeze-lift case, the issue wasn’t technical — it was procedural.
Still, a page was used as a fallback.

On the surface, it seems harmless. But this sets a dangerous precedent.

• It normalizes bad behavior. If leadership treats pages like coordination tools, everyone else follows.
• It undermines planning. Teams stop thinking ahead when they know they can just page later.
• It shifts accountability downward. Engineers bear the stress for what should have been handled upstream.
• It creates alert fatigue. Real incidents get buried under noise.

When leadership uses a page to cover a coordination miss, it quietly tells the org: our time is more important than yours.

💥 The Human Impact

Misusing paging doesn’t just wake people up. It wears them down.
It chips away at trust, boundaries, and the sense that leadership has their back.

• Engineers begin to treat alerts as noise instead of signals.
• On-call rotations feel less like protection and more like punishment.
• The most conscientious people — the ones who care deeply about reliability — start to disengage.

Culture doesn’t rot overnight. It happens one unnecessary page at a time.

🧭 Building a Healthy Paging Culture

Here’s how we can fix it:

1. Define what qualifies as a page.
   If it’s planned, it’s not a page. If it’s predictable, it’s not urgent.
2. Assign a point of contact for maintenance windows.
   Someone should be accountable for coordination, not just “whoever gets paged.”
3. Automate self-service wherever possible.
   Freeze lifts, restarts, and unlocks shouldn’t depend on one team’s manual availability.
4. Post-mortem every unnecessary page.
   Treat it like a process failure — not just a human one.

The goal isn’t fewer pages — it’s better pages.

🧑‍💼 Leadership’s Role

Leaders shape norms, even when they don’t realize it.
When leadership treats paging as a convenient shortcut, they teach the organization to prioritize speed over structure, reaction over reliability.

The right move isn’t to discourage paging — it’s to protect its purpose.

Paging is a contract between trust and urgency.
Break that contract often enough, and people stop answering.

🧩 Closing Thought

The healthiest engineering cultures understand that uptime isn’t just about systems — it’s about people.
Respect the boundaries that keep engineers alert, focused, and willing to respond when it really matters.

Because the moment you start paging for coordination instead of crisis, you’re not solving problems.
You’re creating them.