I work remotely on retainer for a company I worked for when I lived back in Oakland. I work 24/7 pager duty effectively. A lot of times I'll be summoned after w

I work remotely on retainer for a company I worked for when I lived back in Oakland. I work 24/7 pager duty effectively. A lot of times I'll be summoned after working 8-10 hours to just look things up for an important client or confirm sales numbers (which always are correct). I work ~9AM-6PM EST hours but folks at the company generally work 12PM-8PM PST so there's really no good way to plan around those sort of support calls. It wasn't always this way though. The company used to have other developers but they never replaced them when they left. The business unit I work under switched to a maintenance mode effectively where we're just upgrading existing systems for CVEs, supporting the AWS setup, and dealing with important client requests when they rarely come in. I'd push for more money but there just isn't the budget for it and they've made it clear to me. I even had to fight to stay full time as they wanted me to work less days but be on call still, "we need to figure out the best way to utilize our resources" (paraphrased). I will say it's detrimental to my health. I wake up most mornings and immediately grab my phone out of fear I missed an alert in the night. That whole bit about utilizing their resources hasn't been sitting well with me though so I'll probably move on after I finish the extra documentation of our systems they're now pushing for. Just putting a counter point to the people saying, "You signed up for this, you should know what you were doing." It's not always that simple. I have a family now and can't just pick up and change everything at a whim. I'll also say I get nervous going into movie theaters, etc. where I'll be disconnected for a few hours. It's just not a healthy situation at all.