4 ms·

If someone works an on-call rotation and was told about it during the interview process then I see no issue with it. It's baked into the agreed-upon compensatio

by niij 4y ago

If someone works an on-call rotation and was told about it during the interview process then I see no issue with it. It's baked into the agreed-upon compensation already. I don't see how you can declare what an employer/employee are allowed to agree to. Working an on-call is completely reasonable for a salaried employee. If the terms changed after you were hired and you're bound by a contract (and cannot leave without penalty for a certain timeframe) then things would be very different. But the majority of the HN audience is in the U.S. where employment is generally at will.

PeterisP 4y ago
> I don't see how you can declare what an employer/employee are allowed to agree to. Okay, I am coming from a non-US perspective where it's obvious that you can declare what employer/employee are allowed to agree to - "employee rights" means those things which are unalienable and nonnegotiable. I'll simply quote the universal declaration of human rights "24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay." - not only do countries have the right to intervene in employer/employee contracts, they have a duty to do so. If local employment law permits companies to require salaried employees to work 168 hours a week, then that law is literally enabling violation of human rights and should be changed.
- niij 4y ago
  and that's great in theory, yet incredibly vague. I doubt it's targeting HCI that are predominantly on-call: medical professionals, infrastructure engineers, programmers, etc. I picture it as critical of 996 working hours and similar. In any case I suppose we have different expectations on what's reasonable. If you think a handful of pages per year from my consentual employer is infringing on my fundamental human rights then there's not much I can say to convince you otherwise.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    I'm looking at this exactly from the perspective of jobs like medical professionals, infrastructure engineers - I have worked in power infrastructure and have relatives in medicine - where locally none of them are on-call (because the law proscribes this clear boundary); they do 12-18-24 hour shifts of work time, and once the shift ends, they can be (and often are) unreachable. It's not vague, it's extremely clear and simple. Even in a low-volume alert-monitoring position for infrastructure where you might get a few incidents per week (so zero incidents on a median shift) every shift is work time, and scheduled appropriately. It's not about the number of pages you get, but about the differing expectations on boundaries between your employer and your private time. I do have a strong expectation that employers should not be able to set any restrictions of what people will do in their non-work time, or even ask whether the employer will be out-of-service this weekend, in my opinion that is crossing a line. As I said, it's entirely reasonable if you get a handful of pages per year and service them - I also have been in roles where I got a handful of night calls per year and happily did what was useful, and I'd expect that in most cases that's okay for most people. However, if it becomes a requirement where I or you must be "on alert" for a whole week, then IMHO that's not reasonable anymore; I answered those calls but I had no duty to be ready for them and abstain from activities that make me unreachable, and if I had a contractual obligation to do so that would be unreasonable (and also a void, unenforceable clause violating employment law). And if you did not volunteer for it but an employer "pushed" this unreasonable requirement on you (e.g. as a condition for employment) then I would actually say that this violated your human rights even if you got zero pages per year; employees should have the practical right to freely decide how they spend their non-work time during the week (and they should have appropriate non-work time) no matter what contracts they sign.
    - niij 4y ago
      > where locally none of them are on-call (because the law proscribes this clear boundary); they do 12-18-24 hour shifts of work time 24 hour shifts? Sounds like a real worker's paradise. I'll keep my 7-8 hour days with bi-monthly on-call over that, thanks. I'm glad you aren't legislating where I live; I am much happier with the choices and trade-offs in my life than what you or any euro-crat could dream up to "protect" me. > if you did not volunteer for it but an employer "pushed" this unreasonable requirement on you (e.g. as a condition for employment) You have a very different concept of what voluntary and self-agency mean than I do.

by niij 4y ago

PeterisP 4y ago

> I don't see how you can declare what an employer/employee are allowed to agree to. Okay, I am coming from a non-US perspective where it's obvious that you can declare what employer/employee are allowed to agree to - "employee rights" means those things which are unalienable and nonnegotiable. I'll simply quote the universal declaration of human rights "24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay." - not only do countries have the right to intervene in employer/employee contracts, they have a duty to do so. If local employment law permits companies to require salaried employees to work 168 hours a week, then that law is literally enabling violation of human rights and should be changed.

niij 4y ago
and that's great in theory, yet incredibly vague. I doubt it's targeting HCI that are predominantly on-call: medical professionals, infrastructure engineers, programmers, etc. I picture it as critical of 996 working hours and similar. In any case I suppose we have different expectations on what's reasonable. If you think a handful of pages per year from my consentual employer is infringing on my fundamental human rights then there's not much I can say to convince you otherwise.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  I'm looking at this exactly from the perspective of jobs like medical professionals, infrastructure engineers - I have worked in power infrastructure and have relatives in medicine - where locally none of them are on-call (because the law proscribes this clear boundary); they do 12-18-24 hour shifts of work time, and once the shift ends, they can be (and often are) unreachable. It's not vague, it's extremely clear and simple. Even in a low-volume alert-monitoring position for infrastructure where you might get a few incidents per week (so zero incidents on a median shift) every shift is work time, and scheduled appropriately. It's not about the number of pages you get, but about the differing expectations on boundaries between your employer and your private time. I do have a strong expectation that employers should not be able to set any restrictions of what people will do in their non-work time, or even ask whether the employer will be out-of-service this weekend, in my opinion that is crossing a line. As I said, it's entirely reasonable if you get a handful of pages per year and service them - I also have been in roles where I got a handful of night calls per year and happily did what was useful, and I'd expect that in most cases that's okay for most people. However, if it becomes a requirement where I or you must be "on alert" for a whole week, then IMHO that's not reasonable anymore; I answered those calls but I had no duty to be ready for them and abstain from activities that make me unreachable, and if I had a contractual obligation to do so that would be unreasonable (and also a void, unenforceable clause violating employment law). And if you did not volunteer for it but an employer "pushed" this unreasonable requirement on you (e.g. as a condition for employment) then I would actually say that this violated your human rights even if you got zero pages per year; employees should have the practical right to freely decide how they spend their non-work time during the week (and they should have appropriate non-work time) no matter what contracts they sign.
  - niij 4y ago
    > where locally none of them are on-call (because the law proscribes this clear boundary); they do 12-18-24 hour shifts of work time 24 hour shifts? Sounds like a real worker's paradise. I'll keep my 7-8 hour days with bi-monthly on-call over that, thanks. I'm glad you aren't legislating where I live; I am much happier with the choices and trade-offs in my life than what you or any euro-crat could dream up to "protect" me. > if you did not volunteer for it but an employer "pushed" this unreasonable requirement on you (e.g. as a condition for employment) You have a very different concept of what voluntary and self-agency mean than I do.