4 ms·

I see a fair amount of sentiment in this thread that's averse to what from my perspective is a very light on-call schedule. My former employer was a manufactur

I see a fair amount of sentiment in this thread that's averse to what from my perspective is a very light on-call schedule. My former employer was a manufacturing plant that operated 24/7. The engineers (not software, mostly chemical, mechanical, and electrical), all of us carried pagers at all times and were expected to phone in within minutes of being paged, any day or night. A bad enough incident would require you to drive to work and be physically present to resolve it. There was no notion of pager duty -- you just always wore a pager. You had to let everybody on the team know if you were going to be out of pager range. On top of that, we had a rotating support schedule that required one person on a team of five to be at the facility every weekend. And if you think that's bad, let me tell you about my friend. He's the only cardiologist in town...

roel_v 8y ago
"There was no notion of pager duty -- you just always wore a pager." So how much did that pay?
- sevensor 8y ago
  Enough to get me to sign up straight out of school, but not enough to keep me there forever. Their pay scale is pretty generous out of the gate, but it's also pretty flat. The longer you stay, the worse off you are. Attrition in my cohort was about 40% per year.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    I'd imagine that for the engineers, that's not good.
    - deathanatos 8y ago
      That feels (to me) about normal for engineering though; I feel like a lot of engineers tend to stay for around 2-3 years; roughly, ~40% percent per year turnover? Not that this is necessarily a good thing. I feel like most of the turnover is completely preventable, should the employer want to actually keep employees for longer than 2-3 years…
    - sevensor 8y ago
      It wasn't good at that factory, to be sure. I'd estimate that engineers were costing the company money on balance for the first year and a half of their employment -- there was a lot to learn about the process, how the factory ran, working with other departments, and so forth. Bad engineering decisions were very expensive. So when you have a pool of engineers who are mostly too inexperienced to make good decisions, a lot of bad decisions get made. Given the attrition rate, about 50% of engineers were running around making bad decisions, or no decisions at all, at any given time.
Verdex_3 8y ago
Like, I can appreciate that things can always be worse. But the other perspective is that what you're describing is objectively bad. And less of a bad thing is still bad. If I have to option to not do a bad thing (even if it is only minimally bad), then why shouldn't I pursue that option? If you don't mind doing the bad thing, then you should definitely take advantage of that. But probably shouldn't try to convince other people that the bad thing isn't bad. 1) It reduces your own advantage of willing to do the bad thing which you are hopefully converting into money. And 2) its end game is making people do something they don't enjoy without reason or compensation, which seems bad.
- sevensor 8y ago
  "Objective" is a pretty slippery word. It's all about context. I'm glad I had that job and worked under those conditions, and I'm glad I left when I did. It was a good thing for me at the start, but then it got old.
  - Verdex_3 8y ago
    Bad things can work out for your own personal good. Or even the good of the whole of society. However, that doesn't make them not bad. I'm glad that your situation worked out for your own personal good. Nice things happening to people make me happy. Things working out for people make me happy. However, the situation you describe is the latter not the former. That your bad situation, which ultimately worked out for you, did not personally bother you enough to be problematic (for you personally) doesn't make it a good situation. I'm glad that it didn't bother you. However, it may have bothered someone else. Your situation was objectively bad not because it bothered or didn't bother you or another person. Your situation was bad because it was the result of a powerful entity externalizing their failures onto weak entities. A manufacturing plant that has the ability to setup logistics to keep a plant running 24/7 is a powerful entity. A manufacturing plant that is able to support jobs for at least three different engineering disciplines (chemical, mechanical, electrical) is a powerful entity. A powerful entity is able to hire additional staff to handle non-working-hour emergencies. That they didn't hire this staff was their failure. But that's okay, they don't have to pay for this failure because they can force their employees to pick up their failure by working extra hours. The employees are weak entities because they do not have the ability to decline an encroachment of their working lives into their personal lives. They could be sleeping, or eating, or spending time with their families, or spending time on hobbies, or spending time innovating with their discipline. All things which help society and the economy. But instead that time has been stolen to make money for something that already has plenty.

roel_v 8y ago

"There was no notion of pager duty -- you just always wore a pager." So how much did that pay?

sevensor 8y ago
Enough to get me to sign up straight out of school, but not enough to keep me there forever. Their pay scale is pretty generous out of the gate, but it's also pretty flat. The longer you stay, the worse off you are. Attrition in my cohort was about 40% per year.
- mcguire 8y ago
  I'd imagine that for the engineers, that's not good.
  - deathanatos 8y ago
    That feels (to me) about normal for engineering though; I feel like a lot of engineers tend to stay for around 2-3 years; roughly, ~40% percent per year turnover? Not that this is necessarily a good thing. I feel like most of the turnover is completely preventable, should the employer want to actually keep employees for longer than 2-3 years…
  - sevensor 8y ago
    It wasn't good at that factory, to be sure. I'd estimate that engineers were costing the company money on balance for the first year and a half of their employment -- there was a lot to learn about the process, how the factory ran, working with other departments, and so forth. Bad engineering decisions were very expensive. So when you have a pool of engineers who are mostly too inexperienced to make good decisions, a lot of bad decisions get made. Given the attrition rate, about 50% of engineers were running around making bad decisions, or no decisions at all, at any given time.

Verdex_3 8y ago

Like, I can appreciate that things can always be worse. But the other perspective is that what you're describing is objectively bad. And less of a bad thing is still bad. If I have to option to not do a bad thing (even if it is only minimally bad), then why shouldn't I pursue that option? If you don't mind doing the bad thing, then you should definitely take advantage of that. But probably shouldn't try to convince other people that the bad thing isn't bad. 1) It reduces your own advantage of willing to do the bad thing which you are hopefully converting into money. And 2) its end game is making people do something they don't enjoy without reason or compensation, which seems bad.

sevensor 8y ago
"Objective" is a pretty slippery word. It's all about context. I'm glad I had that job and worked under those conditions, and I'm glad I left when I did. It was a good thing for me at the start, but then it got old.
- Verdex_3 8y ago
  Bad things can work out for your own personal good. Or even the good of the whole of society. However, that doesn't make them not bad. I'm glad that your situation worked out for your own personal good. Nice things happening to people make me happy. Things working out for people make me happy. However, the situation you describe is the latter not the former. That your bad situation, which ultimately worked out for you, did not personally bother you enough to be problematic (for you personally) doesn't make it a good situation. I'm glad that it didn't bother you. However, it may have bothered someone else. Your situation was objectively bad not because it bothered or didn't bother you or another person. Your situation was bad because it was the result of a powerful entity externalizing their failures onto weak entities. A manufacturing plant that has the ability to setup logistics to keep a plant running 24/7 is a powerful entity. A manufacturing plant that is able to support jobs for at least three different engineering disciplines (chemical, mechanical, electrical) is a powerful entity. A powerful entity is able to hire additional staff to handle non-working-hour emergencies. That they didn't hire this staff was their failure. But that's okay, they don't have to pay for this failure because they can force their employees to pick up their failure by working extra hours. The employees are weak entities because they do not have the ability to decline an encroachment of their working lives into their personal lives. They could be sleeping, or eating, or spending time with their families, or spending time on hobbies, or spending time innovating with their discipline. All things which help society and the economy. But instead that time has been stolen to make money for something that already has plenty.