Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday • Hacker News Board

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#11

Post by tdeck » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 4:40 AM UTC

thuanao wrote: post #10

Is anyone getting compensated for being on-call? If you are paged and work outside of business hours, do you receive additional compensation?

At Google we used to get paid an oncall bonus which was calculated at something like 1/3 your prorated salary for the non-working hours you were oncall (IIRC), up to some limit per quarter. For my team a week of oncall per quarter would max it out and net you a few thousand dollars bonus.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#12

Post by themenomen » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 4:40 AM UTC

thuanao wrote: post #10

Is anyone getting compensated for being on-call? If you are paged and work outside of business hours, do you receive additional compensation?

Yes. And not only for responding to a page, but also for being stand by outside working hours.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#13

Post by losteric » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 4:44 AM UTC

thuanao wrote: post #10

Is anyone getting compensated for being on-call? If you are paged and work outside of business hours, do you receive additional compensation?

On my teams, if someone got paged off-hours they would just work less the day after the event. imo it should just be part of the regular salary/work expectations, incentivizing keeping oncall low

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#14

Post by rk06 » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 4:50 AM UTC

losteric wrote: post #13

thuanao wrote: post #10

Is anyone getting compensated for being on-call? If you are paged and work outside of business hours, do you receive additional compensation?

On my teams, if someone got paged off-hours they would just work less the day after the event. imo it should just be part of the regular salary/work expectations, incentivizing keeping oncall low

No, it should be compensated, so Management prioritises fixing issues, instead of adding new bugs

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#15

Post by taberiand » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 4:53 AM UTC

hnbear wrote: post #7

I’ve always been partial for Friday night through Friday night. You start off over the weekend, when you have energy and can survive the two days alone. Ideally no Friday releases so the transition is calm, but as the writer says the batches might fail. You spend the week fixing whatever breaks. You’re cleanly off the Monday to Monday sprint, just doing on-call/ops. You finish Friday evening and immediately get Frida…

That was exactly my reasoning too when I set up our on call roster as Friday to Friday, though for us Saturday is the busiest day in terms of customer activity, so it was a no-brainer.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#16

Post by AaronM » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:05 AM UTC

We are on-call for 48hrs at a time, about once every 12 days or so, one day as backup, and one as primary. It's nice because it doesn't interrupt your week too much. The downside being that complex issues might require extra work while not on-call

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#17

Post by Charon77 » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:16 AM UTC

My company does this

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#18

Post by ackermann-m-n » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:27 AM UTC

thuanao wrote: post #10

Is anyone getting compensated for being on-call? If you are paged and work outside of business hours, do you receive additional compensation?

In France it is mandatory either with salary or rest. In addition the labor code stipulates mandatory daily rest of 11 contiguous hours even during the weekend and extra 24 contiguous hours of rest during the weekend. Hours of intervention are considered work.

In my company we get approximately 800€ for every week of on-call and each hour of intervention is also compensated with salary.

From my point of view this should be high enough for the company to be willing to focus on on-call issues. Ater years of being on-call I must admit the salary is comfortable but it doesn't cover the pain and constraints of being on-call: being kinda "stuck" at home basically, lots of consequences on private life etc.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#19

Post by superfrank » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:29 AM UTC

hnbear wrote: post #7

I’ve always been partial for Friday night through Friday night. You start off over the weekend, when you have energy and can survive the two days alone. Ideally no Friday releases so the transition is calm, but as the writer says the batches might fail. You spend the week fixing whatever breaks. You’re cleanly off the Monday to Monday sprint, just doing on-call/ops. You finish Friday evening and immediately get Frida…

This post was discussed somewhere else and I saw someone say that their work does Firday noon to Friday noon and their work gives the outgoing on call the rest of Friday off. I feel like that's even better because 1) it recognizes the hard work that the outgoing on call put in 2) it give the incoming on call a few hours to get up to speed while they still have the support of the other engineers on the team.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#20

Post by superfrank » Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 5:30 AM UTC

losteric wrote: post #5

I have occasionally convinced teams to adopt both oncall and sprint cycles aligned with Tuesday [1] - the dev teams all loved it. Management was a harder sell, but by and large were happier with the extra days to communicate results/get metrics before their own Friday deadlines. [1] also Wednesday/Thursdays. Wednesdays were my favorite in good working environments, it felt like running a successful marathon, but it w…

I'm curious why Tues to Tues for sprints was a hard sell to management?