# On-Call — Sylvain Kalache

URL: https://www.sylvainkalache.com/topics/on-call

My writing, talks, podcasts, and projects about On-Call.

## Selected work

- [Health Checks for Systems. What About Your Team?](https://www.sylvainkalache.com/content/health-checks-for-systems-what-about-your-team.md) (2026-09-10; Conf42): Applying system-level observability to team health: using signals from the stack to detect unsustainable on-call rotations and overwork before they lead to burnout and resignations.
- [The Science of On-Call Burnout: Why "How Are You Doing?" Always Gets "Fine"](https://www.sylvainkalache.com/content/the-science-of-on-call-burnout-why-how-are-you-doing-always-gets-fine.md) (2026-05-06; DevOpsDays Austin): Why traditional burnout detection fails in engineering teams. Connecting Maslach's burnout research and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory to observable on-call metrics, and demonstrating that observed data outperforms subjective self-reporting.
- [Gandhi Kumar — Principal Incident Commander at Twilio](https://www.sylvainkalache.com/content/gandhi-kumar-principal-incident-commander-at-twilio.md) (2026-04-28; Humans of Reliability): The golden hour — why the first 15 minutes of an incident decide everything, from mitigation strategy to customer trust, and why human psychology matters more than tools.
- [Stephen Townshend — SRE Team Lead at isDown](https://www.sylvainkalache.com/content/stephen-townshend-sre-team-lead-at-isdown.md) (2026-03-04; Humans of Reliability): Burnout doesn't ask permission — the physiology of burnout from an incident responder's perspective, warning signs, recovery, and the systemic changes the industry must make.

[All work](https://www.sylvainkalache.com/index.md)