51–60 of 104 posts
I am amazed by how beautiful and clear the first answer is. How nice, uncondemning it is, how it really gives the possibility of the OP is truly clueless that he's in the wrong.
An average week of out-of-hours involves precicely zero pages. This is also important: when we get paged for something, we take steps to avoid being paged for the same thing again. Not just because we value our sleep, but because management values our services being up and running so we're encouraged to fix stuff that's broken.
We did have a team saying that their services were noisier than other teams', and asking if they could be paid more as a consequence. The answer was to fix their service reliability, not to incentivise people to wait until out-of-hours to declare an incident so they trigger the bonus payment.
So long as I've got mobile coverage, I'm free to get on with my life. I carry my laptop if I'm more than 30 minutes from home, but I don't expect to need to use it.
I used to work on call in non-software, as a blood analyzer Field Service Engineer for medtech companies, like Siemens, Roche, Beckman-Coulter, Bio-Rad, etc. I spent 5 years doing this.
In that industry and job it's standard to work on call rotations that last for 7 days through the weekend and repeat every 3-5 weeks depending on team size. Because the job is hands-on and at customer sites, the minimum response time is usually a bit more than 15 minutes.
If anyone is considering accepting an on-call rotation, don't. It takes over your life. At first you may think it's fun to swoop in and be the hero fixit person, or maybe you at least tolerate it because of high base pay or something. Eventually you grow to hate the sound that accompanies the callout text or email. By the end, it triggered a visceral physical negative reaction I later learned was a minor anxiety attack.
The thing managers seeking to add on-call don't understand (those who haven't done it themselves), is that when you're on call you can't do anything. Not only can you not drink (minor annoyance), you can't even leave the house for normal stuff like a movie (medium), or attend events like a kids graduation or recital (major).
And before you say "just swap rotations around on your team," I worked with about 10-15 guys and you'd be surprised how hard it is to swap. Everyone makes plans for things all the time without realizing it would interfere with on-call, like going to the gym. At the start of the year when the on-call rotations would be released to us, there was a mad rush to submit vacation requests to get it locked in before illness or other things required swapping on-call around, much less having to take field requests from colleagues that you may (will) have to rely on when you in turn need a swap, so you can't just ignore every request.
This manager and CTO are hilariously unprepared and uninformed, bordering on pure dreaming. A 15 minute max response time is criminally unrealistic, you can't even go to the grocery store. And once a week seems low on paper until you realize that depending on team size, you can easily wind up being forced to give up a quarter of your weekends for the year (as I had to).
I haven't worked on-call for software, so maybe it's different, but I doubt it's really too different.
After 5 years of all that lost time, the amount I'd have to be paid to go back on-call is so astronomically high no company would ever pay it. Actually, now that I have a kid, there's probably no amount I could be paid if it means missing time with them.
The whole, "How can I get people to do X when they don't want to do it for $Y?" is just a funny question. It is like asking, "How do I buy a sandwich when no one wants to sell me one for $1?" Of course if everyone except a single employee IS willing to do X for $Y then the company many choose to replace them.
Seriously, it's crazy that everyone doesn't already know the answer is, "Pay them enough to make it worth their time."
I've done a fair bit of on-call during my career, but I wouldn't do it anymore (at least not for any dollar amount a company would likely pay). I value my time outside work -- and my sleep -- too much. The standard in SV seems to be that on-call is required and uncompensated (some companies will dishonestly try to suggest that your salary is higher than it would be otherwise). This is gross, and we shouldn't stand fo…
I see two solutions to the conundrum. At one company where I previously worked, they required that employees receive 2x the time off, if you had to fix or work on anything during off-hours. Another company I’ve been at is pretty strict about not shipping things until they’re ready (but, that company doesn’t hire juniors in engineering). Pick your poison. The fact is that no engineer wants to get paged. But we have to…
One company I worked at didn't have a formal policy of giving people time off if they got paged, but most/all managers would allow for it. That's nice, I guess, but to me still doesn't cover it. Even if the pager never goes off, the employee has made their off-hours worse (that is, not really off-hours anymore) in order to give the company value. Not compensating them for that is unethical.
Just to specifically address one bit:
> But we have to be responsible for our work and our mistakes.
Absolutely agree. But if you want me to be responsible for my work outside of regular work hours, I expect to be compensated for my time. Also consider that I'm being asked to be responsible for my teammates' work as well; while I do have some influence over the quality of their work, it's far from sufficient to guarantee their work is equivalent in quality to mine (and vice versa).
I've done a fair bit of on-call during my career, but I wouldn't do it anymore (at least not for any dollar amount a company would likely pay). I value my time outside work -- and my sleep -- too much. The standard in SV seems to be that on-call is required and uncompensated (some companies will dishonestly try to suggest that your salary is higher than it would be otherwise). This is gross, and we shouldn't stand fo…
We are paid a base rate just for being on call, it's less than our normal rate and the same for anyone in the company who goes on-call. It's payment for making ourselves available, not for doing any work. If I'm up in the night, I'll want a lie in the next morning.
Incentives are important -- unlike other commentators, I agree with my management that paying extra for time spent actually working when on-call is not a great idea: it sets up a perverse incentive. We have a base hourly rate for on-call (with a half-hour response time) and time off in lieu for actual call-outs. Teams differ, but my team has separate rotas for in-hours and out-of-hours. This means that if you're up a…
I don't doubt this, but surely you can agree many people lead lives which they would not be free to live in this arrangement? Putting children to bed. Driving somewhere. Cooking. Going to a bar...
I've done a fair bit of on-call during my career, but I wouldn't do it anymore (at least not for any dollar amount a company would likely pay). I value my time outside work -- and my sleep -- too much. The standard in SV seems to be that on-call is required and uncompensated (some companies will dishonestly try to suggest that your salary is higher than it would be otherwise). This is gross, and we shouldn't stand fo…
I much prefer the incentives around time off in lieu for working out of hours, rather than elevated pay. We are paid a base rate just for being on call, it's less than our normal rate and the same for anyone in the company who goes on-call. It's payment for making ourselves available, not for doing any work. If I'm up in the night, I'll want a lie in the next morning.
A company I worked at (informally, as there was no specific policy) gave people the day off if they got paged overnight and had to do work. That's certainly something. The problem with it being informal is that many employees didn't realize it'd be ok for them to take off the next day, so they didn't. And managers often wouldn't pro-actively offer it.
But the question to me is: if I have to wake up at 2am and work for 4 hours, is that "equivalent" to having the next day off? Maybe? But also: maybe not.
> on call at least once a week, including the work day and evening, once a month, including the weekend of that week.
> I should also note there is a required 15 min response time to pages. The person MUST be able to be online and fixing the problem within 15 mins of the page.
I've worked a position where I had extra duties on the weekend, so I effectively worked 12+ days in a row many times. I've also been on an on-call schedule like this with a short response time. Both of these severely impact your personal life.
You have to realize that the two most valuable things you can give engineers is their own time back and money.
This is how I would probably try to handle it: To start, it would be opt-in and not mandatory, as this type of responsibility is difficult for those with small children or other family members, such as elderly, needing care. The 15 minute response time also means you should be being paid an hourly rate (maybe even 1.5x or 2x) while being on-call, whether there's an incident or not. This is because it severely limits what you can do -- you're basically chained to your laptop and an internet connection. Anyone responding to an on-call event after hours should also be given a half or full day off the next work day. Weekend on-call should at a minimum be given a day off the following week, preferable two.
I've done a fair bit of on-call during my career, but I wouldn't do it anymore (at least not for any dollar amount a company would likely pay). I value my time outside work -- and my sleep -- too much. The standard in SV seems to be that on-call is required and uncompensated (some companies will dishonestly try to suggest that your salary is higher than it would be otherwise). This is gross, and we shouldn't stand fo…
I much prefer the incentives around time off in lieu for working out of hours, rather than elevated pay. We are paid a base rate just for being on call, it's less than our normal rate and the same for anyone in the company who goes on-call. It's payment for making ourselves available, not for doing any work. If I'm up in the night, I'll want a lie in the next morning.
Then again the employer could just let the employee decide which one they want.