From Amazon On-Call Hell to Startup Resilience

When I worked at Amazon, I hated on-call.

For the non-tech bros out there, “on-call” means you’re the designated firefighter for your team’s tech systems. For an entire week, if something breaks day or night you’re the one getting paged.

Yes, even at 3:00 am. Yes, even if you just fell asleep. Yes, even if it’s your birthday.

And once that page hits, you better log in, diagnose, and start fixing. Because if it’s not resolved immediately, a slow-moving avalanche of “Any update?” pings from middle managers (and their managers) starts rolling in.

Sound stressful? It is.

I used to count the minutes until my on-call week ended.

But here’s the twist.

That brutal, sleep-deprived, anxiety-inducing Amazon on-call experience turned out to be the best founder training I could’ve asked for.

Running a Startup Feels Like One Long On-Call Shift

No one tells you this when you’re raising your seed round and printing your first “CEO” title on LinkedIn, but being a founder is just permanent on-call.

Servers don’t just go down. Customers churn. Bugs get reported at midnight. That one important integration silently fails. Your Stripe webhook throws a tantrum.

And when that happens, who’s on call?

You.

Debugged, resolved, and live in minutes. Building Perseuss means staying on-call for our customers and loving every moment we ship something that works.

But Now, I'm Ready

At 23, I would've probably spiraled.

Now I go back to the on-call playbook I learned the hard way.

• Is this really mission-critical?

• Will the customer even notice?

• Can I get the critical piece working in 5 minutes and patch the rest later today?

These questions saved me then.

They save me now.They help me triage chaos, stay calm, and focus on what truly matters.

Because in a startup, panic is expensive.

Clarity is gold.

To Everyone On-Call Right Now

To my friends still in big tech, pulling an on-call shift this week, I’m praying for you.

I know it sucks. I know you’re tired. But here’s the thing.What feels like chaos today is quietly building the mental muscle you’ll need tomorrow.

Someday, when it’s your product that breaks at 3:00 am,

and your customers waiting on a fix,

you’ll be grateful for the fire drills you hated.

So hang in there.

Drink water. Get sunlight. Fix the bug.

And when you log off, know that you’re leveling up.

Final Thought

On-call isn’t just a tech rite of passage. It’s a crash course in ownership, urgency, and grit.

You don’t forget it.

You build on it.

You Perseuss through it.

About the Author

Tomas David Ye is the Founder & CEO of Perseuss, a logistics software company helping warehouses and fulfillment centers optimize parcel packaging with intelligent cartonization. A former Amazon engineer and junior national gymnast, Tomas blends technical precision with startup grit. He writes about building under pressure, s