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> If a company thinks an application is important enough to run 24x7 then it should staff for 24x7 support And where it really matters, they do. My team and I

> If a company thinks an application is important enough to run 24x7 then it should staff for 24x7 support And where it really matters, they do. My team and I build and manage a large Emergency Services telecommunication network. We have Tier 1/2 operators on shift work 24/7. Tier 3 staff (programmers, system integrators and administrators) are their escalation point for critical issues outside of business hours. > Stealing wages from workers by expecting them to be available 24x7 (on-call) The Tier 3's that are on-call in our environment are on a rotating roster are compensated nicely for being prepared to answer the phone outside business hours. Frequently they don't get called during their week at all and it's free money. > how is a dev's development ability when they were up at 2:30am on an incident call the night before? Easy, as well as the financial compensation, we give them time in lieu. Two hours callout in the middle of the night, two (paid) hours given back on their next working day, or whenever they prefer, subject to availability of other staff. There are simple solutions to these problems, and where they matter, they are applied. Granted things are very black and white for us as lives are potentially at stake, but any company that wants to have 24/7 engineers available needs to pay for that kind of support.

piokoch 6y ago
"Frequently they don't get called during their week at all and it's free money." That's, I think, is a wrong perspective, when people are on call, they have to be somewhere near their computer/internet connection and be ready to work (so it is not just you can go to a party and if call happens do some quick fix in a toilet). On-calls cannot do what they want with their time, so they don't get money for free.
- nineteen999 6y ago
  Yeah this is true although our compensation for their time is pretty generous. As a team we are pretty flexible too and if somebody has an event they want to go to they can always find someone else on the team to cover or swap with them for the night.
machello13 6y ago
> Easy, as well as the financial compensation, we give them time in lieu. Two hours callout in the middle of the night, two (paid) hours given back on their next working day, or whenever they prefer, subject to availability of other staff. Every company should do this but none I've worked at do. To be honest, I just take the makeup time myself.
- kolla 6y ago
  Well two callout hours in the night should at least be 4 hours paid during day.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Most companies don't watch the clock for their software engineers. If you get called in the middle of night and take the makeup time yourself, does the company give you time in lieu or not? (By outcome, I would say that they do.)
  - machello13 6y ago
    That's fair. It would be nice if it was an explicit policy though. Otherwise I feel like the company is just exploiting engineers who may not know any better.
nemetroid 6y ago
> Two hours callout in the middle of the night, two (paid) hours given back on their next working day This still sounds cheap to me. I have never worked on-call (and I never plan to), but the exhaustion cost of working two hours in the middle of the night is not equal to two hours of uninterrupted sleep. I would expect to get at least a half day off (paid) for any amount of middle-of-the-night work.
- nineteen999 6y ago
  The thousand bucks extra they make a week whether they get called or not makes up for it. It's not like I clock watch my team anyway, if they took an extra hour here or there I don't bat an eyelid, they're all hard workers and they get the job done without complaining.
fatnoah 6y ago
>Easy, as well as the financial compensation, we give them time in lieu. Two hours callout in the middle of the night, two (paid) hours given back on their next working day, or whenever they prefer, subject to availability of other staff. I didn't note this in my post above, but I always gave time-in-lieu for any late night activity. However, the thing that REALLY worked best was allowing the Engineers to prioritize reliability. I had to fight to make it happen, but going from nightly to every couple months volumes was worth it.

piokoch 6y ago

"Frequently they don't get called during their week at all and it's free money." That's, I think, is a wrong perspective, when people are on call, they have to be somewhere near their computer/internet connection and be ready to work (so it is not just you can go to a party and if call happens do some quick fix in a toilet). On-calls cannot do what they want with their time, so they don't get money for free.

nineteen999 6y ago
Yeah this is true although our compensation for their time is pretty generous. As a team we are pretty flexible too and if somebody has an event they want to go to they can always find someone else on the team to cover or swap with them for the night.

machello13 6y ago

> Easy, as well as the financial compensation, we give them time in lieu. Two hours callout in the middle of the night, two (paid) hours given back on their next working day, or whenever they prefer, subject to availability of other staff. Every company should do this but none I've worked at do. To be honest, I just take the makeup time myself.

kolla 6y ago
Well two callout hours in the night should at least be 4 hours paid during day.
sokoloff 6y ago
Most companies don't watch the clock for their software engineers. If you get called in the middle of night and take the makeup time yourself, does the company give you time in lieu or not? (By outcome, I would say that they do.)
- machello13 6y ago
  That's fair. It would be nice if it was an explicit policy though. Otherwise I feel like the company is just exploiting engineers who may not know any better.

nemetroid 6y ago

> Two hours callout in the middle of the night, two (paid) hours given back on their next working day This still sounds cheap to me. I have never worked on-call (and I never plan to), but the exhaustion cost of working two hours in the middle of the night is not equal to two hours of uninterrupted sleep. I would expect to get at least a half day off (paid) for any amount of middle-of-the-night work.

nineteen999 6y ago
The thousand bucks extra they make a week whether they get called or not makes up for it. It's not like I clock watch my team anyway, if they took an extra hour here or there I don't bat an eyelid, they're all hard workers and they get the job done without complaining.

fatnoah 6y ago

>Easy, as well as the financial compensation, we give them time in lieu. Two hours callout in the middle of the night, two (paid) hours given back on their next working day, or whenever they prefer, subject to availability of other staff. I didn't note this in my post above, but I always gave time-in-lieu for any late night activity. However, the thing that REALLY worked best was allowing the Engineers to prioritize reliability. I had to fight to make it happen, but going from nightly to every couple months volumes was worth it.