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How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

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Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#91

Post by johnnyanmac »

Apreche wrote: post #16

One other solution nobody has suggested. Hire lots and lots of staff, and work in shifts. Have enough people on each shift that even when people use PTO or fall ill, someone is always working. Nobody ever has to be on call. Instead everyone works normal hours, but someone is always available. You’ll still have to pay extra if you want people working on holidays, though.

It's probably the worst solution for an employer. if they don't want to give 50% salary to keep current staff on call, they won't want to spend 2x to have staff on hand in staggering hours.

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#92

Post by johnnyanmac »

chrisandchris wrote: post #47
anotherhue wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pay for each minute one is on-call Isn't that just overtime? I'd much prefer to bring a laptop with me a few weekends a year than be expected to fill a full workday with my family around the house on a weekend.

See it otherwise: It's not overtime, as a firefighter does not overtime 8h a day. It's your job and your job is to be on-call while writing code or vice-versa. I think the only viable method for such a fast response time is that it's your work. You will have off on Friday but work on Saturday (or something like that). If it's more like 1h response time sure, take your laptop with you to familys dinner.

I don't really like the firefighter analogy to be honest. A Firefighter is on call but to compensate for their physical well-being they tend to only work 3-4 days a week (even if those 3 days are 24 hours spent in the station, potentially on the weekend). Moreover, fires are inevitable and frequent, despite being sporadic.

I think there is certainly merit to wondering what format a business needs based on client demands, but a mentally focused white collar job doesn't need to go as extreme as a firefighter who is literally burning out their body in the line of duty.

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#93

Post by chrisandchris »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #92
chrisandchris wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See it otherwise: It's not overtime, as a firefighter does not overtime 8h a day. It's your job and your job is to be on-call while writing code or vice-versa. I think the only viable method for such a fast response time is that it's your work. You will have off on Friday but work on Saturday (or something like that). If it's more like 1h response time sure, take your laptop with you to familys dinner.

I don't really like the firefighter analogy to be honest. A Firefighter is on call but to compensate for their physical well-being they tend to only work 3-4 days a week (even if those 3 days are 24 hours spent in the station, potentially on the weekend). Moreover, fires are inevitable and frequent, despite being sporadic. I think there is certainly merit to wondering what format a business needs based on client dema…

I partially agree with you and I wanted to use the analogy more for the part where he/she only really fights fires a part of the compensated time and is also paid for being "just waiting". I think taking the analogy to far won't work anyway (fires don't happen that frequent actually in less big cities, there's a lot of other stuff they do, compensation IMHO dies not relate to putting your life at risk at all, there's volunteers to which are even paid less, ...).

My main point is along the line if your customer wants these nines, they have to do (pay) something. If you as employer want it, same. You as employee are just at "the end of it".

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#94

Post by johnnyanmac »

andrewaylett wrote: post #52

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…

>it sets up a perverse incentive.

how so. It's already the incentive to work. If you require more work and more of a employee's time, you pay more money. It's not that complicated.

In the same vein, there's expected business hours, so requiring a business to operate outside of those require more money. If they need that sort of timely response off hours, they pay more money too. So the incentive should be "try to call us during business hours or wait for a response".

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#95

Post by johnnyanmac »

ftth_finland wrote: post #31

I love how the manager’s immediate reaction is to go for constructive dismissal.

Good. If this goes through I hope the employee walks. They clearly want workers who can do those hours and they need to renegotiate that. be it with existing employees or new ones (who are likely going to cost more, plus time to train. Buf if a company wants to cut off its nose to spite the face, go for it).

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#96

Post by johnnyanmac »

hevans66 wrote: post #26

If you are begging your engineers to be on call, you have built the wrong engineering culture. Your core engineering team should feel ownership of the app, it should be their baby. What happens in this case is EVERYONE shows up when there is a site issue, and your best engineers burnt out. Instituting an on-call schedule is what a good engineering manager does to force engineers to NOT be on-call 24/7, and instead in…

> it should be their baby.

Made that mistake. Glad it only took one layoff to show that that's never true in Big Business. Never again. I am a worker providing my talent to work on a product I don't own. I will take responsibilities but never "ownership". "ownership" implies that I have a stake in the product, and the product goes with me no matter what. Which I have yet to experience (maybe one day).

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#97

Post by saltminer »

EA-3167 wrote: post #29
troupe wrote: post #9

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."

Or alternatively, just don't have on-call?

It's incredible how many teams have on-call for their internal service which is only used during business hours across 1-4 timezones. If your system has predictable usage and isn't global, there's very little reason to have on-call unless you have a client willing to pay $$$ or the loss of business would be catastrophic, in which case you can absolutely afford to compensate your devs for it.

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#98

Post by EA-3167 »

saltminer wrote: post #97
EA-3167 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, it's crazy that everyone doesn't already know the answer is, "Pay them enough to make it worth their time."

Or alternatively, just don't have on-call? It's incredible how many teams have on-call for their internal service which is only used during business hours across 1-4 timezones. If your system has predictable usage and isn't global, there's very little reason to have on-call unless you have a client willing to pay $$$ or the loss of business would be catastrophic, in which case you can absolutely afford to compensate…

These are all very good points and well said, I agree!

Re: How can I get my engineers to accept being on call?

#99

Post by andrewaylett »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #94
andrewaylett wrote: post #52

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…

>it sets up a perverse incentive. how so. It's already the incentive to work. If you require more work and more of a employee's time, you pay more money. It's not that complicated. In the same vein, there's expected business hours, so requiring a business to operate outside of those require more money. If they need that sort of timely response off hours, they pay more money too. So the incentive should be "try to cal…

I'm all in favour of paying someone to work! And every minute spent on-call should be compensated.

What I don't like is "if my service is flaky then I get more money", because I don't want my service to be flaky but I like getting money.

If you're paying me to be available, but giving them time in lieu for any time worked, then you're not getting more of my time for free. Conversely, if you pay me only when I'm called out (which I recognise isn't something you've suggested) then I get the hassle of being on call but I'm only paid if my service breaks.

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