Are SWEs at Google expected to firefight especially outside of normal work hours? This is one thing I imagine SREs are expected to be doing that regular SWEs aren't. I think this is also why they require strong development background for the role.
I worked in Amazon which has a similar view to on-call to Google. Usually one person is on-call for the team for a cycle of every week or fortnight. There is also a "follow the sun" model wherein another team in has your nights covered. I do recall that SWEs also had the responsibility of being on-call, since teams are usually a mix of SWEs and SREs.
Naturally a team with a high ops load was shit and made your life hell. After my time there, I vowed never to do on-call unless it was after hours and specifically for emergency response. My opinion is - if there's an issue during work hours, the leads or the entire team should be on it - and collectively fix it.
