5 ms·

Being on call should just be paid at the normal hourly rate. It's an outrageous setup up: we need you to available but don't want to pay you for it. I did it f

Being on call should just be paid at the normal hourly rate. It's an outrageous setup up: we need you to available but don't want to pay you for it. I did it for a few years and it made me pretty depressed. By the end of it I stopped giving a shit and just resumed my normal Friday night of having a few beers (or a lot of beers). At first they offered me a rate that was less than min wage. I said no until it was an acceptable rate. Every other company seems to pay terrible on call rates in the UK. It makes me angry just thinking about this period of my life. Seriously, if a company wants to make money doing SAAS then they can't expect to steal employee time. My advice, if asked to do it, refuse until they offer very good money for it. Good luck to them recruiting a system expert to replace you.

yek 4y ago
Are there any companies out there that will pay the normal rate? Google is the only place I've ever worked that will compensate for oncall, and even then it's at 2/3 for Tier 1 or 1/3 for Tier 2.
dylan604 4y ago
I've never been in a postion that had on-call responsibilities that was hourly. Everyone of them was salaried positions. Is on-call hourly employees a thing? Sorry, I'm not well versed in how to screw over employees except any of my direct experiences
- bennysomething 4y ago
  It is common in UK to be salaried but on call on an hourly rate.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Right, and in my situations, if the crisis that demanded I be brought in was solved, it was assumed/expected I'd be taking those hours out of my normal work hours. So maybe leaving early one day, or an entire day depending on the severity. On call hours were treated as a multiple vs one to one. Seemed pretty sane/rational to me that I never minded being on-call. There were the occassion where I was not immediately available, but I notified everyone when I would be and got to work when I said I would. I can see where this is ripe for abuse by either side, so I'm not trying to brush off those that are getting abused by it.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  Pretty normal for government work. My dad was a plumber for LA County, on call pretty frequently to respond to broken pipe emergencies and what not, and got paid an hourly rate on top of normal salary for that, whether he got called in or not. Even as a software developer contractor, when I've worked government contracts, if you're authorized to charge overtime, you do have to actually charge it, and get paid more than your salary, if you work overtime. Otherwise, you're donating labor to an executive agency, which violates the Constitution's granting of exclusive power of the purse to Congress. This is the same basic reason that, if you donate money to the government, you can only donate to the Treasury general fund and not to a specific activity, also why Iran-Contra was illegal (one of many reasons, I suppose).

yek 4y ago

Are there any companies out there that will pay the normal rate? Google is the only place I've ever worked that will compensate for oncall, and even then it's at 2/3 for Tier 1 or 1/3 for Tier 2.

dylan604 4y ago

I've never been in a postion that had on-call responsibilities that was hourly. Everyone of them was salaried positions. Is on-call hourly employees a thing? Sorry, I'm not well versed in how to screw over employees except any of my direct experiences

bennysomething 4y ago
It is common in UK to be salaried but on call on an hourly rate.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Right, and in my situations, if the crisis that demanded I be brought in was solved, it was assumed/expected I'd be taking those hours out of my normal work hours. So maybe leaving early one day, or an entire day depending on the severity. On call hours were treated as a multiple vs one to one. Seemed pretty sane/rational to me that I never minded being on-call. There were the occassion where I was not immediately available, but I notified everyone when I would be and got to work when I said I would. I can see where this is ripe for abuse by either side, so I'm not trying to brush off those that are getting abused by it.
nonameiguess 4y ago
Pretty normal for government work. My dad was a plumber for LA County, on call pretty frequently to respond to broken pipe emergencies and what not, and got paid an hourly rate on top of normal salary for that, whether he got called in or not. Even as a software developer contractor, when I've worked government contracts, if you're authorized to charge overtime, you do have to actually charge it, and get paid more than your salary, if you work overtime. Otherwise, you're donating labor to an executive agency, which violates the Constitution's granting of exclusive power of the purse to Congress. This is the same basic reason that, if you donate money to the government, you can only donate to the Treasury general fund and not to a specific activity, also why Iran-Contra was illegal (one of many reasons, I suppose).