3 ms·

My current on call setup that page would count as one hour worked of my weekly 40. Ideally I'd be paid extra as well (I get about an hours pay a week as an on

My current on call setup that page would count as one hour worked of my weekly 40. Ideally I'd be paid extra as well (I get about an hours pay a week as an on call allowance). What makes it work is that I'm the senior dev on the project that I'm on call for - if it hits the fan it really is my problem. And more accurately, in the last two years I've been called out twice. So that extra hour a week of pay... it's just free money.

lmarcos 5y ago
> it's just free money. No. The downside of being on-call is not the number of times you get paged at 3am. The real downside is that if you are on call 24/7 and you have to react to an alert within the next 15min that means: - you cannot go out for dinner - you cannot go out for a run - you cannot go and pick up your kids (if the ride takes more than 15 min) - etc. The only thing you can do is stay at home with your laptop next to you, or wherever you go, take your laptop with you. That's being on call, and it's NOT free money.
- grogers 5y ago
  If actually getting paged is rare them just bring your laptop to dinner, that's what I always used to do. Sure, it might be that time you are unlucky and have to work through dinner which sucks a lot. But it shouldn't happen much. Running is an issue, unless you don't mind a sweaty back to carry your laptop, or just run loops nearish to your house with your phone on you. What I usually did when picking up kids (close by, about 30 min round trip, YMMV) was to ack the page from my phone and log in when I got back home. Yes it sucks to be tethered to a laptop. But if after-hours pages are rare, and you aren't on call more than ~25% of the time, for me personally it's acceptable
- Psychlist 5y ago
  That's not how my on call setup works. I need my phone and my laptop, and I need to be able to respond within half an hour or so. The changes I have to make are in code that then goes through CI and a load test before hitting production, so there's no "you have 10 seconds" stuff. We don't have anyone on call in the sense you mean, and I've never seen it in the wild. If they want someone right there all the time they've paid them to be in the office where they have proper access to critical systems. When I worked in a medical environment that was what we did, and those people got paid very well for doing overnight "tech support" ... they were bored enough that answering random IT questions seemed worth while for them.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  That’s a strange setup. When I was the only developer on a service the only guarantee I could give was that I’d try to make my way to a computer as soon as possible if I got a call, but I didn’t bring my laptop with me all the time. A lot of stuff can be resolved from your phone though. After reading a bunch of the other messages here, I think the reason it was ok for me was that I was always in a position to fix the root cause. I wouldn’t ever get the same alert twice if I did my job correctly.

lmarcos 5y ago

> it's just free money. No. The downside of being on-call is not the number of times you get paged at 3am. The real downside is that if you are on call 24/7 and you have to react to an alert within the next 15min that means: - you cannot go out for dinner - you cannot go out for a run - you cannot go and pick up your kids (if the ride takes more than 15 min) - etc. The only thing you can do is stay at home with your laptop next to you, or wherever you go, take your laptop with you. That's being on call, and it's NOT free money.

grogers 5y ago
If actually getting paged is rare them just bring your laptop to dinner, that's what I always used to do. Sure, it might be that time you are unlucky and have to work through dinner which sucks a lot. But it shouldn't happen much. Running is an issue, unless you don't mind a sweaty back to carry your laptop, or just run loops nearish to your house with your phone on you. What I usually did when picking up kids (close by, about 30 min round trip, YMMV) was to ack the page from my phone and log in when I got back home. Yes it sucks to be tethered to a laptop. But if after-hours pages are rare, and you aren't on call more than ~25% of the time, for me personally it's acceptable
Psychlist 5y ago
That's not how my on call setup works. I need my phone and my laptop, and I need to be able to respond within half an hour or so. The changes I have to make are in code that then goes through CI and a load test before hitting production, so there's no "you have 10 seconds" stuff. We don't have anyone on call in the sense you mean, and I've never seen it in the wild. If they want someone right there all the time they've paid them to be in the office where they have proper access to critical systems. When I worked in a medical environment that was what we did, and those people got paid very well for doing overnight "tech support" ... they were bored enough that answering random IT questions seemed worth while for them.
Aeolun 5y ago
That’s a strange setup. When I was the only developer on a service the only guarantee I could give was that I’d try to make my way to a computer as soon as possible if I got a call, but I didn’t bring my laptop with me all the time. A lot of stuff can be resolved from your phone though. After reading a bunch of the other messages here, I think the reason it was ok for me was that I was always in a position to fix the root cause. I wouldn’t ever get the same alert twice if I did my job correctly.