No, it should be compensated, so Management prioritises fixing issues, instead of adding new bugs
I've wished for a tech workers union for this reason. I don't care about pay, let the union say nothing about pay. But let's align incentives. Any time spent fixing issues on-call is compensated 4-to-1. Workers may accrue compensation time, and any compensation time in excess of 20 hours is paid 10-to-1 when the employee leaves. The idea here isn't for workers to accrue and cash out comp time, but instead to give an…
We can pay for oncall availability, but rewarding outages and slow recoveries is a dangerous incentive.
When did on-call become so accepted and demanded from employers? Currently I am "Release Captain" for a week: So I have to setup any releases and manage all the related tasks, do automated/manual testing of the release, release (enabling toggles and any config changes). Then Backup to secondary and primary for a week: About once or twice I am asked to help with tickets. Then for 14 days we alternate primary / seconda…
> When did on-call become so accepted and demanded from employers? As a 50 something year old software engineer. Its always been like this. I'm kinda shocked at how reluctant the new generation is to support the systems. Sure we'd all prefer strict 9-5 hours but most companies rely on software to stay in business and you need experts available in case things go wrong.
If you need experts 24/7, you should have had shifts that cover that timeframe.
Oncall is a source of so many ways for abuse, don't even ask me how I know. Saying that rejecting Oncall is denying support for you system is bollocks.
I'm happy that younger engineers mostly laught at that concept and leave. Once of the few lessons they are teaching us (the old pricks), especially in self care and respect space.
firstly, on call means supporting the entire service. not something in general I built. secondly, many if not most of the issues that arise are part of some infrastructure automation or third party service or database. expecting me to be fluent in all of those to be useful in the hot seat is a pretty substantial investment and qualifies me to be an SRE on top of my other duties thirdly, one major reason why my code m…
If you are on call for infrastructure, then I could understand not wanting to be on call. If I'm there, I'm on call for infrastructure as SRE. I get all political reasons that your code may not work. However, refusing to be on call doesn't fix any of those reasons, it's just ignoring work. Flip side as SRE, I ask if Devs are on call. If they are not, I don't take the job because there is zero incentive for them to fi…
You expect to not be responsible for what happens to the software you put into production? (… and I'd like to avoid distracting arguments that amount to "my company does on-call badly" — yeah, those problems do exist and we should strive to fix them. But if I'm to not categorize the argument here as the baby with the bathwater, then we need something to replace on-call with. Prod goes down on a Saturday afternoon; ar…
> You expect to not be responsible for what happens to the software you put into production? First: IT seems to be rather the exception - most professions have no on-call. Eg. even if my car mechanic screws up a service job, they'll have me bring the car back into the garage during their normal working hours, regardless of how and where stranded I am in the middle of the night. A second comment: I'll be responsible f…
Doctors, firemen and cops are obvious examples, but I've called plumbers at 2am because of a burst pipe flooding the basement. I've called locksmiths well past closing time due to lockout. I've called landlords at all hours for apartment emergencies. Society needs on-callers of all kinds. It's not surprising that some people are vociferously against holding the pager, and I sincerely wish those people success in avoiding it. But someone will always have to step up and they should be appropriately rewarded for it (I've been on-call and was considered lucky to have gotten overtime for it, which I think is strange because it's just a well-aligned incentive structure that any smart company should have)
> IT seems to be rather the exception I think there’s actually a fair number of jobs where some level of this is expected. Doctors are one obvious example — they have on call responsibilities often more onerous than IT, and depending on the situation don’t always receive additional compensation for it. If you manage people who work different hours from you, in a lot of jobs it’s not uncommon to be called in if shit h…
> Doctors are one obvious example — they have on call responsibilities often more onerous than IT, and depending on the situation don’t always receive additional compensation for it. I mean.... On call doctors literally save lives. Most on-call software engineers don't. So.
If you go to most hospitals at 2AM and need a specialist of some kind (say a specific type of surgeon), there’s going to be someone in that specialty on call whose going to get paged to wake up, come in, and see you. Even in family practice, it’s not uncommon to be able to get a call back from the on call doctor at the practice on weekends or off hours — if you’ve got a situation that maybe doesn’t warrant the ER, bu…
> If you go to most hospitals at 2AM and need a specialist of some kind (say a specific type of surgeon), there’s going to be someone in that specialty on call whose going to get paged to wake up, come in, and see you. Only if you're dying. Come in late Friday and you're going to be sitting in a bed until Monday even if your gall bladder is about to explode.
Sorry, you’re right. Doctors have it way easier than software engineers.
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…
You expect to not be responsible for what happens to the software you put into production? (… and I'd like to avoid distracting arguments that amount to "my company does on-call badly" — yeah, those problems do exist and we should strive to fix them. But if I'm to not categorize the argument here as the baby with the bathwater, then we need something to replace on-call with. Prod goes down on a Saturday afternoon; ar…
Why do I give a single shit about the software having an issue at 2am? I don't own the company. I don't care. If they care they can hire night shift triage.
I hate on-call shifts, but if they must exist, I like the way my team handles them. We have split day and night shifts. 7-18 day shift, and 18-07 night shift. All non-work hours compensated with standby at 10% of hourly pay. Any pages outside of work hours earn you an additional 150% in base pay. Each page guarantees a minimum of 3 hours of pay even if you spent only 5 mins on it. And since in my country, you must ga…
With that setup I'd almost cheer when I get paged. As long as that time off doesn't become "why you now behind on X"
Is anyone getting compensated for being on-call? If you are paged and work outside of business hours, do you receive additional compensation?
Google paid SREs 67% their hourly rate for tier 1 oncall outside business hours, regardless of whether they were paged. So 12h shifts on weekends were a full day's pay. Convertible to Off-in-Lieu. I had so many off days. Not sure if it's still the case after those layoffs. Anyway, I prefer Mon - Thu, Fri - Sun shifts.
Damn stuff like this motivates me to start a union