Comment by solid_fuel

> There was high turnover from the lack of headcount and overwork which was somewhat alleviated by lowering the hiring bar...

Seen this game played before, at AWS working on the control plane for outposts. The correct solution here is dedicated operations staff to coordinate with the team and let the developers fast track issues that are resulting in high call volumes, not lowering the hiring bar for the entire team. The problem you run into with high call volumes and small teams is that it disrupts most developers enough that they can't build solutions and deal with the maintenance burden at the same time. You bleed talent because it places way more stress than necessary on the team.