How can I get my engineers to accept being on call? • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by jwie » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

Put yourself into the oncall rotation for starters.

For a US exempt employee it would be fairly straightforward to push oncall expectations into a role. But in other countries with robust labor protections it might be more challenging. Ultimately the solution is money.

But doing it yourself goes a long way to convincing your team it’s necessary. I personally do this as a manager and I find it helps a lot. If you get paged a few times at 3am it really helps align your priorities with your team.

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

#22

Post by klyrs » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

woeirua wrote: post #7

Pay more or let them go. That’s it. If the job suddenly requires on call, and someone refuses to comply then show them the door and hire someone else with the explicit expectation that there will be on-call.

Prepare yourself for a constructive dismissal settlement.

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

#23

Post by temp10723 » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:27 PM UTC

Pay them for the value they provide.

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

#24

Post by tamimio » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:27 PM UTC

A lot of managers or CxO think they own the employees and when suddenly they change mindset, they expect it for free, there’s nothing more pity than a C level who’s more of business guy than technical and understands everything comes with a price, and yet wanted it free of charge, pay him for the extra services you require, each contract is a unique case, just because other engineers do or agreed to do so, doesn’t mean he should if the contract says otherwise.

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

#25

Post by jrockway » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:28 PM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #15

anotherhue wrote: post #3

Submitter but not OP. Just to be clear the only answer to this is a daily stipend for being on call PLUS a payout per incident (min. 1hr billing). And of course, it's opt-in. Anything else is devaluing yourself to the poor decisions of others. "I will work harder!".

This only works if the incident rates are completely divorced from the work of the engineers. Otherwise it creates a perverse incentive to increase the number of incidents.

Yeah, I think just paying volunteers to be on call is fine. Adjusted for inflation, I'd expect this number to be around $2000/week. This is incredibly cheap compared to hiring 3 teams for follow-the-sun support, and gives the early-career folks on your team the opportunity to make a little bit of extra money; somewhat rare in the world of "engineering ladders" and whatnot where it is kind of a slog before you are rolling in cash.

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

#26

Post by hevans66 » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

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 institute an equitable distribution of responsibility. I think all small eng teams should have on-call rotations, and it's the reason behind why I built https://heiioncall.com/.

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

#27

Post by kelnos » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #20

hosteur wrote: post #10

Easy. Pay them a decent salary for every hour they are on call. Simple as that.

You can't pay me a decent* salary for on-call. This is true of many people. One developer I worked with took medication at night which rendered him completely useless, and skipping the medication resulted in several very bad days. For me, it's simply a work/life balance thing, and I can find work that doesn't need it. The "easy" answer is to put it in the job ad, and hire people who agree to it. Because forcing that…

Yup, agreed.

At the very least, make it opt-in, and keep raising the on-call pay until you have enough existing employees who will decide the trade off is worth it. At some point it maybe ends up being more economical to follow your suggestion to put out a job ad specifically for on-call people.

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

#28

Post by chrisandchris » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

anotherhue wrote: post #3

Submitter but not OP. Just to be clear the only answer to this is a daily stipend for being on call PLUS a payout per incident (min. 1hr billing). And of course, it's opt-in. Anything else is devaluing yourself to the poor decisions of others. "I will work harder!".

No, the only solution in this case is full pay for each minute one is on-call. A (professional) firefighter is mostly on-call on his shift and is paid the same amount whether he's waiting or at an incident. Sure, he does stuff while waiting (like maintenance). But nobody said your It stuff couldn't do maintenance too.

If you really need on-call with 15min response time, design your business around it (and your finances!).

The whole blog could just stop at: > The CTO mandated [...]

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

#29

Post by EA-3167 » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

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."

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

#30

Post by kelnos » Sat, Oct 07, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

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.

A company I worked at started (inconsistently) adopting a "follow the sun" on-call approach once they were large enough to have enough engineering staff on more than one continent. There was certainly still some time that needed coverage that was outside anyone's work hours, but at least people weren't having entire days (including their sleep) ruined by on-call.