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> Do you have kids? hobbies? friends? Do you like to go fishing on weekends? Do you like having a job that gives you money to pay for all those things as well

by cletus 5y ago

> Do you have kids? hobbies? friends? Do you like to go fishing on weekends? Do you like having a job that gives you money to pay for all those things as well as the basic ability to, you know, live? How far do you want to take this? Is working 40 hours a week taking time away from your children, friends or hobbies? Of course it is. But nobody owes you a living. A job is you trading your time and your skills to someone else in a way that provides that person value. There are going to be parts of that job you like and probably parts you don't. If you really want to avoid oncall then fine, do it. That will likely limit your career opportunities because some jobs will require it or your coworkers may be rewarded (monetarily and careerwise) because they're doing something you're not. There's nothing wrong with that choice but at the same time you don't get to complain because others benefit from doing something you won't. > but... it doesn't have to be that way. For 24/7 production services then who exactly supports those services? > I'll never have those nights and weekends back that I spent being on call for products and services that don't exist anymore. There's a pretty good chance that nothing you worked on will exist in 25 years. What's your point?

PeterisP 5y ago
The issue seems to be about unreasonable work hours. On-call time is work time - perhaps not "full" work time, but definitely not free time or rest time. If you're on call for 24 hours of Saturday, that's fine, but then work is taking up 24 hours more than your usual week, and deserves a major change in compensation or extra rest time (e.g. the following monday off) as it's a big change from a 40 hour or 50 hour week. If your team has allocated every engineer to an on-call day every week, that's the equivalent of expecting all of your engineers to devote 60+ hour weeks every week to their job - and IMHO that's not okay; some of your engineers may be fine with that (and would deserve what essentially is overtime compensation), but having that as a requirement for everyone is not reasonable in non-toxic workplaces, if there's no good place in your team for people who will only work 40-ish hours, then that would be pretty much discriminatory on multiple groups. Having a "week of on-call" is equivalent to a continuous 168-hour shift, which is simply not done anywhere else and should not be a thing. If you want 24/7 production services, then you need to map shifts of support. For continuous work you just run 3x8 or 2x12 hour shifts; but outside of IT industry where you need "spotty monitoring", 24 hours on / 48 hours off is a commonly used system - but it's not a 24 hour shift on top of another full time job.

by cletus 5y ago

PeterisP 5y ago

The issue seems to be about unreasonable work hours. On-call time is work time - perhaps not "full" work time, but definitely not free time or rest time. If you're on call for 24 hours of Saturday, that's fine, but then work is taking up 24 hours more than your usual week, and deserves a major change in compensation or extra rest time (e.g. the following monday off) as it's a big change from a 40 hour or 50 hour week. If your team has allocated every engineer to an on-call day every week, that's the equivalent of expecting all of your engineers to devote 60+ hour weeks every week to their job - and IMHO that's not okay; some of your engineers may be fine with that (and would deserve what essentially is overtime compensation), but having that as a requirement for everyone is not reasonable in non-toxic workplaces, if there's no good place in your team for people who will only work 40-ish hours, then that would be pretty much discriminatory on multiple groups. Having a "week of on-call" is equivalent to a continuous 168-hour shift, which is simply not done anywhere else and should not be a thing. If you want 24/7 production services, then you need to map shifts of support. For continuous work you just run 3x8 or 2x12 hour shifts; but outside of IT industry where you need "spotty monitoring", 24 hours on / 48 hours off is a commonly used system - but it's not a 24 hour shift on top of another full time job.