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Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

arthur-johnston.com

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Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#101

Post by smitelli »

guessmyname wrote: post #60
canergl wrote: post #58

wrong, oncall shifts should not even exist

I agree with the sentiment, but on-call support is an unavoidable necessity given the critical nature of many systems that underpin modern society. When we talk about on-call, we’re not referring to systems like Netflix streaming a major fight for 65 million users, but rather essential infrastructure like healthcare systems, nuclear power plants, military operations, financial markets, and the vast array of SCADA (Su…

I’ve always felt it should be split among a geographically distributed team where support hours follow the sun. It really sucks to be awake at 3am, alone, groggy and unsupported and responsible for saving the world.

If the company/product isn’t large enough to be distributed, is it really important that it have a 10 minute time-to-acknowledge?

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#102

Post by looperhacks »

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?

We're being compensated for being available (more on weekends and holidays) and get additional compensation for every 30 minutes incident response. Two incidents in one night? Twice the money. Additionally, we are required to work less the next day (we're also required by law to have at least eight hours of free time between two work days. So if you get an incident seven hours after you got off work? Congrats, you now have to wait eight hours before you can start working. This is of course very annoying, so nobody does that)

I'm not even sure if doing on-call duty without compensation is legal in my country.

In the past, there were some cases of "fake" incidents, but the amount of documentation makes sure that the company is able to crack down on this.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#104

Post by sed_zeppelin »

I just want to jump in as a minority voice here. In case anybody is reading the other comments and feeling... alienated.

I refuse to accept on-call duties, full stop. If a job posting expects it, I don't apply. If a hiring manager says they have it, I do not accept the offer. If management starts talking about maybe implementing it, I protest. If it becomes enacted, I resign.

There is absolutely no situation in which I will ever participate in another on-call shift. I've been there, I've done it, now that chapter of my life is closed. Find some younger kid, pay them better than you paid me for the miserable intrusion on their life. I'm done.

Just wanted to be the voice who says what, hopefully, some of the more seasoned and battle-scarred readers here are thinking.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#105

Post by sed_zeppelin »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #76

Here's my on call schedule: never, and don't ask. It's my responsibility to do my job when I am scheduled, and it's management's responsibility to staff properly. If we can't agree, then we can't have a business relationship.

I wish more devs had the gumption to refuse it.

I can understand on-call hours if you're a literal firefighter or paramedic who saves lives. I understand that, as a building superintendent, every once in a long while you have to run out and fix a burst pipe before property is destroyed. I don't understand why some of these tech companies have on-call responsibilities like there was some hazard to life or property.

They need five nines of availability to make sure they don't lose one cent of potential ad revenue? Good luck with that, I guess, but I'll be over here actually sleeping through the night.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#106

Post by sed_zeppelin »

guessmyname wrote: post #60
canergl wrote: post #58

wrong, oncall shifts should not even exist

I agree with the sentiment, but on-call support is an unavoidable necessity given the critical nature of many systems that underpin modern society. When we talk about on-call, we’re not referring to systems like Netflix streaming a major fight for 65 million users, but rather essential infrastructure like healthcare systems, nuclear power plants, military operations, financial markets, and the vast array of SCADA (Su…

I was once paged over thirty times in a span of 24 hours while working for a website that, in the grand scheme of things, could unilaterally improve life in the United States by shutting itself down.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#107

Post by convolvatron »

sed_zeppelin wrote: post #104

I just want to jump in as a minority voice here. In case anybody is reading the other comments and feeling... alienated. I refuse to accept on-call duties, full stop. If a job posting expects it, I don't apply. If a hiring manager says they have it, I do not accept the offer. If management starts talking about maybe implementing it, I protest. If it becomes enacted, I resign. There is absolutely no situation in which…

on call is like hiring civil and structural engineers to build you a bridge over a canyon, and then when they show up to do a site inspection you just push them in. eventually maybe you'll be able to cross.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#108

Post by bckr »

matsemann wrote: post #65
bckr wrote: post #28

> But websites need to be up 24/7, cron jobs need to run on the weekend and backend servers need to be up to support both Tech entrepreneurs should give more weight to choosing markets that don’t require this

An internal service we relied on when working at Norway's biggest government agency had opening hours. If you called it outside 8-17 it wouldn't reply, heh.

Government is a good one. Healthcare is another. Anything geography-locked.

I’m not saying no one should create a highly available web service. I am saying that this is one of those things that techies assume, and shouldn’t, because it’s a huge plus to hiring, business and engineering simplification, and morale if you can define away non-business-hour problems.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#109

Post by bckr »

vineyardmike wrote: post #62
bckr wrote: post #28

> But websites need to be up 24/7, cron jobs need to run on the weekend and backend servers need to be up to support both Tech entrepreneurs should give more weight to choosing markets that don’t require this

It used to be somewhat common for websites/services to go down for a few minutes every so often for maintenance/migrations/etc. Tech entrepreneurs should give no weight to this. The market seems to support engineers doing on-call rotations, and a service that can’t tolerate any downtime is (theoretically) a service that is worth a lot to a lot of people- which is perfect for monetizing. Tech entrepreneurs should stop…

> and a service that can’t tolerate any downtime is (theoretically) a service that is worth a lot to a lot of people- which is perfect for monetizing.

The connection makes sense but one must not think in this order. One must think “people will pay for this” and then consider “does this need to be highly available?”

If you have more than one road to choose from, and one of them doesn’t require high availability, then give that one some bonus points for that.

Re: Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday

#110

Post by jxf »

einichi wrote: post #68
polack wrote: post #26

We do Thursday to Thursday and then you get Friday off after completed on-call. Being on-call gives you no extra pay by itself, but if you get paged off hours and need to work you get paid 150 to 200% of your normal hourly wage depending on what time of day you need to work. Best on-call I’ve had.

No pay for being on call by itself is still poor, particularly when it comes to swapping rotations between team members to provide flexibility amongst each other. You’re making yourself available 24/7. That has a non trivial lifestyle impact which I’ve always thought deserves more than is typically rewarded.

In OP's case it sounds like they do get compensated with the day off, which is PTO. It's not a trade everyone would make but an extra day off into a long weekend is one I would have taken earlier in my career.
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