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Breaking Up with On-Call

reflector.dev

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Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#141

Post by ianmcgowan »

dakiol wrote: post #62

For me the worst thing about being on-call is not the actual work outside business hours (it’s usually not much), but the potential work: if something happens I need to jump into my laptop within X minutes (changes from company to company, but it’s usually within 10 minutes). This means: I cannot go for a run, I cannot go to the movies, I cannot go for a dinner with family, I cannot even go shopping (shopping mall is…

In California, as a non-exempt employee (basically not a manager if you're at a big company), you'd have to be paid for that on-call time with those requirements. The key term is "restricted" and the 10 minute expectation is quite a severe restriction.

https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/callbackandstandbytime.pdf https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/policies/california-...

This doesn't apply to a lot of people reading, but just a PSA for those in CA where it might.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#142

Post by bobthepanda »

9rx wrote: post #133
rwmj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay is all about power. Nurses individually have little power (as they are replaceable), which is why unionising is good for them as the union gives them collective power. Software engineers are an interesting case; some have a great deal of domain-specific knowledge, giving them leverage over their employers. Many less so, and so a union could help. AI might change this equation too.

> Nurses individually have little power (as they are replaceable) Replaceable with what, exactly? The local ER is now having to close in the evening because they can't find sufficient nursing staff to keep it operating.

At least locally the experience is that hospital admin has gone delulu by thinking they can replace hiring unionized nursing staff with much more expensive travel nurses

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#143

Post by inetknght »

xyst wrote: post #70

Question to tech folks in general: when you are "on-call" are you provided with differentials in pay regardless of whether an incident actually occurs? I have seen it vary across companies: - Some companies don’t pay any differential - Some companies only pay out _per incident_ - One company I worked with paid out per shift of on-call rotation - One company treated it as overtime pay

> Some companies don’t pay any differential

This is quite scummy unless your role's primary duties are support and nothing else. I would count Site Reliability Engineer as support being a primary duty, while I would not count Software Engineer as support being a primary duty.

> Some companies only pay out _per incident_

That's a bad incentive. It incentivices more incidents to occur.

> One company I worked with paid out per shift of on-call rotation

Sounds decent on paper but everyone has their breaking point!

> One company treated it as overtime pay

Sounds decent on paper but everyone has their breaking point!

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#144

Post by jobs_throwaway »

Anon1096 wrote: post #110
ekimekim wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I'm in charge of an on-call rotation I always try to make it very clear that this is not the expectation. In my preferred model of on-call, you have a primary, then after 5min an escalation to secondary, then after 5min an escalation to something drastic (sometimes "everyone", sometimes a manager). The expectation is that most of the time you should be able to respond within 5 minutes, but if you can't then that…

We have a primary/backup setup and I would be pretty pissed if my primary just started going out for movies or a date night during their shift tbh. My job as a backup is to be there for unexpected events, ie they did not wake up or had an accident. Not be on call effectively 2 weeks in a row just because the primary doesn't take it seriously.

Yeah, going for a run or a dinner where you might be able to ack but not actually at keys for 10-20 minutes is one thing. Going to a movie or date where you might not even ack and won't be at keys for hours? Not cool at all.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#145

Post by therealfiona »

wnc3141 wrote: post #140
dakiol wrote: post #62

For me the worst thing about being on-call is not the actual work outside business hours (it’s usually not much), but the potential work: if something happens I need to jump into my laptop within X minutes (changes from company to company, but it’s usually within 10 minutes). This means: I cannot go for a run, I cannot go to the movies, I cannot go for a dinner with family, I cannot even go shopping (shopping mall is…

The airlines pay a certain rate when you go on call - since your'e still effectively on company time.

I mean, I'm salary, so I get paid for on-call as part of that, but I don't get any extra pay for picking up my team's on-call rotation.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#146

Post by gopher_space »

gosub100 wrote: post #127
pjmlp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't how unions work, rather the usual US fearmongering of having them.

It just dawned on me how this argument runs perfectly parallel to religion if you point out intolerance, misogyny, or violence. It's always "those other people" that do the bad thing, and everyone only reaffirms their own system of worship. You could almost do a 1-1 find/replace of keywords and have the same argument.

Everyone who works for a living understands why unions exist even if they don’t need one locally.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#147

Post by jobs_throwaway »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #106
spiffytech wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any particular reason you can't handle incidents while out and about? I know it varies by situation. When I've been on call I've been able to mostly go about my life. I just had to keep my laptop close, stay in cell signal, and accept I would sometimes have interruptions (typically brief). We fought to keep them infrequent enough that they didn't ruin our lives.

I do long(ish) distance running as a hobby - it's not feasible to take a laptop out on a two hour run. If I want to go meet a friend for a drink or food, I have to lug around a backpack, keep an eye on it to make sure it's not stolen. If I wanted to have a beer or wine, I can't because I may need to work at any point. Favourite band is performing? I suppose you could take a backpack and the laptop to the venue, but a…

> If I wanted to have a beer or wine, I can't because I may need to work at any point.

One beer or glass of wine renders you incapable? I'd be totally comfortable having 1-2 drinks on call.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#148

Post by jobs_throwaway »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #109
dakiol wrote: post #62

For me the worst thing about being on-call is not the actual work outside business hours (it’s usually not much), but the potential work: if something happens I need to jump into my laptop within X minutes (changes from company to company, but it’s usually within 10 minutes). This means: I cannot go for a run, I cannot go to the movies, I cannot go for a dinner with family, I cannot even go shopping (shopping mall is…

If you're on-call, you're working - it doesn't matter if there's an active incident or not. Unless you're a contractor (in which case, you're unlikely to be on-call) the company you work for pays for your time, not delivery of specific work-items. On-call pay should reflect this.

99% of people on-call are salaried anyways

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#149

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

inetknght wrote: post #136
procaryote wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the code is important enough that it needs to be fixed if it breaks at 03:00, someone needs to be on-call If that someone isn't the dev, things breaking at 03:00 is someone else's problem from the PoV of the dev, and it will likely keep breaking. I've tried at several companies to get dev-teams to prioritise things causing a lot of work for the ops-team, and nothing has worked as well as disbanding the ops team an…

> If that someone isn't the dev, things breaking at 03:00 is someone else's problem from the PoV of the dev, and it will likely keep breaking. If that's the case, then the person responding at 03:00 needs to have a serious conversation with the dev, or with whoever's assigning/prioritizing tickets to the dev.

It's not usually tickets that are needed, but a complex set of software development and reliability practices that can't be communicated through Jira.

Re: Breaking Up with On-Call

#150

Post by mertleee »

Just hire an SRE. If you want to piss off your team and incur more costs than the annual salary of one decent SRE... ask your team to do on-call rotations.

In this day and age if you're a properly capitalized startup you should have the budget for one decent SRE hire. They often times double as a technical writer and are great at preventing knowledge silos in teams / members of a small team since they have to sort of know everything to be an effective SRE.

Best process improvement I ever made for my teams.

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