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As someone who has been in this industry for a long time and seen a lot, this still baffles me. Who agrees to being on call 24/7 for a week? Especially when yo

As someone who has been in this industry for a long time and seen a lot, this still baffles me. Who agrees to being on call 24/7 for a week? Especially when you are getting paid a typical professional salary? It seems absurd. I've always been active after hours and willing to jump in when things happen. But this idea that you are essentially working (since you need to always be somewhere you can start working within minutes) for a week out of a month every month of your life for a salary job with no equity or long term payoff on the other end, has to be the most bizarre choice a person could make. Maybe there is something to that I don't understand? I guess if you don't have any other interests or people in your life. But that just seems really sad. Possibly someone who does this could help me to understand this a little better?

jedberg 8y ago
I've been on call most of my working life. When I worked at reddit, I was on call 24/7/365. The only time I wasn't on call was for the weekend of my wedding. When I got to Netflix, only being on call one week a month was a drastic improvement. It meant that I could plan my vacations and important family events around not being on call. On the flip side, my family understood if I suddenly got up from dinner to take a call or get out my laptop. My on call schedule was shared with the family so we could all plan accordingly. Sometimes when it was my week and I had something really important, I would ask a coworker to cover that night for me, and then do the same for them in the future. The salary for the position accounted for this inconvenience, and it wasn't a surprise. Since everyone who does SRE has this same responsibility, it's built into the compensation. Some companies actually give you extra money when you are on call (I hear Google is one of them). Yeah, it kinda sucks from a family perspective, but it is what it is. As long as you set expectations with everyone around you, it's not that big a deal. As it turned out at Netflix, since I was the lead, it meant that I was the secondary or tertiary on call at all times, but again, the family knew this, and also, my coworkers knew that if I didn't answer it was because I really really couldn't take the call at that time, and everyone was fine with that. It just rolled up to next person. Only the first on call was expected to answer, all the rest of us were on a "it would be great if you could" basis.
- HeavenBanned 8y ago
  Thank you for sharing that anecdote. It was very nice.
ori_b 8y ago
> Who agrees to being on call 24/7 for a week? Especially when you are getting paid a typical professional salary? It seems absurd. I've always been active after hours and willing to jump in when things happen. That's called being on-call 24/7 for the entire span of your job.
nasalgoat 8y ago
Going on 25 years now of being oncall. It's very, very good incentive to make sure the systems are optimized and working nicely. I get a page about once a month, maybe. Because I do my job.
- majkinetor 8y ago
  This. Automate well enough and you almost never get called.
lazyasciiart 8y ago
Our company introduced this last year. The reactions ranged from "the fuck you think I'm going to do this" to "you bunch of whiners, when I did Ops I was on call 25/8/370 for $0". The way teams implemented it ranged from "you have that week to work on whatever you want/not show up" to "well we don't expect any out of hours calls so we won't implement anything except a roster". It's been fascinating.
titanomachy 8y ago
I do call one week in 10. I typically have between one and three out-of-hours pages during this time. A typical page takes 20 minutes to deal with, although sometimes they do take longer. 30-minute response time means I can still do things like skiing or hiking during on-call weekends, if I'm a bit creative. As a result of doing call, my team's product runs reliably and meets its SLA requirements, allowing my company to sell the product to other serious companies and therefore for my job to exist. I get paid around $4k for each week of this (on top of my normal salary). It is worth it for me. I have "other interests and people in my life", including a girlfriend, friends, outdoor adventuring. One week in ten hardly affects anything, and I can usually trade with a teammate if I want to go away a particular week. Most of my friends have their own careers which make far more onerous demands on their lives for less compensation (doctors, lawyers, nurses, restaurateurs).

jedberg 8y ago

I've been on call most of my working life. When I worked at reddit, I was on call 24/7/365. The only time I wasn't on call was for the weekend of my wedding. When I got to Netflix, only being on call one week a month was a drastic improvement. It meant that I could plan my vacations and important family events around not being on call. On the flip side, my family understood if I suddenly got up from dinner to take a call or get out my laptop. My on call schedule was shared with the family so we could all plan accordingly. Sometimes when it was my week and I had something really important, I would ask a coworker to cover that night for me, and then do the same for them in the future. The salary for the position accounted for this inconvenience, and it wasn't a surprise. Since everyone who does SRE has this same responsibility, it's built into the compensation. Some companies actually give you extra money when you are on call (I hear Google is one of them). Yeah, it kinda sucks from a family perspective, but it is what it is. As long as you set expectations with everyone around you, it's not that big a deal. As it turned out at Netflix, since I was the lead, it meant that I was the secondary or tertiary on call at all times, but again, the family knew this, and also, my coworkers knew that if I didn't answer it was because I really really couldn't take the call at that time, and everyone was fine with that. It just rolled up to next person. Only the first on call was expected to answer, all the rest of us were on a "it would be great if you could" basis.

HeavenBanned 8y ago
Thank you for sharing that anecdote. It was very nice.

ori_b 8y ago

> Who agrees to being on call 24/7 for a week? Especially when you are getting paid a typical professional salary? It seems absurd. I've always been active after hours and willing to jump in when things happen. That's called being on-call 24/7 for the entire span of your job.

nasalgoat 8y ago

Going on 25 years now of being oncall. It's very, very good incentive to make sure the systems are optimized and working nicely. I get a page about once a month, maybe. Because I do my job.

majkinetor 8y ago
This. Automate well enough and you almost never get called.

lazyasciiart 8y ago

Our company introduced this last year. The reactions ranged from "the fuck you think I'm going to do this" to "you bunch of whiners, when I did Ops I was on call 25/8/370 for $0". The way teams implemented it ranged from "you have that week to work on whatever you want/not show up" to "well we don't expect any out of hours calls so we won't implement anything except a roster". It's been fascinating.

titanomachy 8y ago

I do call one week in 10. I typically have between one and three out-of-hours pages during this time. A typical page takes 20 minutes to deal with, although sometimes they do take longer. 30-minute response time means I can still do things like skiing or hiking during on-call weekends, if I'm a bit creative. As a result of doing call, my team's product runs reliably and meets its SLA requirements, allowing my company to sell the product to other serious companies and therefore for my job to exist. I get paid around $4k for each week of this (on top of my normal salary). It is worth it for me. I have "other interests and people in my life", including a girlfriend, friends, outdoor adventuring. One week in ten hardly affects anything, and I can usually trade with a teammate if I want to go away a particular week. Most of my friends have their own careers which make far more onerous demands on their lives for less compensation (doctors, lawyers, nurses, restaurateurs).