6 ms·

On-call requires you to more or less not plan anything other than being available for work. Sure most of the time nothing goes wrong--but that isn't the constra

by sidlls 4y ago

On-call requires you to more or less not plan anything other than being available for work. Sure most of the time nothing goes wrong--but that isn't the constraint, here. The whole point is that something might go wrong and that the person on call must respond within a given window of time (5-15 minutes, generally). That effectively makes even mundane things like going to the grocery store a potential trade-off in favor of work. I definitely consider every hour of the day I'm on call (all 24 of them) as a working hour, and so should every other engineer. Since tech companies get away with not paying for this service, I take off from normal working hours at a rate of 1.5 times the time I spend resolving an on-call alert. I'd rather be compensated with cash for it.

ajross 4y ago
> On-call requires you to more or less not plan anything other than being available for work. No, it requires that you be able to stop whatever it is you're doing and be working on a problem within some latency tolerance (5m and 20m are cited upthread, for example). For most modern datacenter workloads, that can be as simple as "carry your laptop and stay within reliable coverage". While sure, that rules out a lot of activites, most of our lives are spent in that regime already.
- sidlls 4y ago
  The point is that for work you are required to be available to work at any given time during the shift, no different from being required to work during business hours in the office. It is work, period. Not free time. And it should be compensated accordingly (at least time and a half, when outside of normal business hours).
  - robocat 4y ago
    Do whatever you want that leaves you available to be interrupted is nothing like work during work hours and maybe steal a some minutes to do what you want. There are plenty of things I do in my own time that can be interrupted: books, movies, HN, housework, etcetera.
    - nfhshy68 4y ago
      - Morgawr 4y ago
        > unpaid overtime Nobody is saying oncall should be unpaid, especially not in this subthread you're commenting on. Did you lose the thread of the conversation?
        sidlls 4y ago
        Being paid at 2/3 base is technically not "unpaid" and it's better than most other tech companies, but it's hardly laudable. They're basically saying your life (literally--the time you spend on-call is time you never get back) is worth less when you're working for them, but outside office hours. I will probably never cease to be amazed at how naive software engineers can be. It's like the relatively high base salaries act as bedazzling enchantments that turn off parts of the rational brain.
        joshuamorton 4y ago
        No, they're saying the inconvenience of having to be (approximately) butt-in-desk doing your job is greater than the inconvenience of having to be near your home. And that is absolutely true.
        nfhshy68 4y ago
        It depends how much you value your time outside of your 40. I value it at time and a half. If you want me to work those hours at time and a half or you want me to sit by a phone both is fine but that's how much it costs. More than happy for the market to eat my lunch. I'll eat mine, uninterrupted.
      - robocat 4y ago
        > idiots https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - nfhshy68 4y ago
    If my boss tried to tell me I had to keep my phone on, carry it around everywhere, and carry a laptop around and couldn't leave cell range I'd ask how much he was paying me to do that and for a new contract that laid out my new time and a half rate. Software developers aren't special, were not even operations staff. Just build stuff that fails gracefully and deal with it on Monday.
- bigiain 4y ago
  > that can be as simple as "carry your laptop and stay within reliable coverage" And be sober, and somewhere quiet enough you'll reliably hear/feel the notification, and be somewhere you can get that laptop out and type away at it for a while. I get _much_ less enjoyment from many social activities when I'm on call. I enjoy gigs way less. I enjoy parties way less. I pretty much wont go to movies. I hate being "on call" while out at dinner with friends. I will not go on a date while on call (at least not with somebody I don't know well enough for them to understand the on call obligations). > most of our lives are spent in that regime already But not all hours in my life are of equal "value" to me. A lot of the "most valuable and enjoyable times" get disproportionally affected by being on call. I care way less about potentially being paged at 2:30am on a Tuesday morning than I do about having to curtail social events on a Friday evening or a weekend. You _will_ need to pay me handsomely to do that, and guarantee it only rarely becomes my responsibility. Been there, done that, am perfectly happy to turn down job offers that don't understand that (or to walk away from companies who try and spring that on me later I've accepted).
  - Morgawr 4y ago
    > And be sober Technically this is not a requirement. I've definitely known people going oncall while tipsy or at the pub, as long as you're not shitfaced drunk and physically unable to answer the page. Not that it's something I'd ever do or recommend doing, but it's technically not forbidden.
Morgawr 4y ago
I was oncall for 3 years at Google on a tier 2 rotation for a service that had very mild alerts (we did have some very common ones but they were mostly just noise with almost 0 actionable thing to do). Every time I was oncall during weekends or holidays (or outside work hours) it was just a normal day with the occasional "phone call". As long as I had my laptop with me and I had some kind of network coverage (which I did unless I went trekking in the non-existing mountains of Ireland, which I didn't during oncall days) it was fine. My coworkers in search or ads were a bit more stressed out on that though, I agree, having to ask their secondary to cover just for the 5-10 minutes they wanted to take a shower because they could not miss a single alert, but for us on a secondary service that was not a problem. I've had days where I commuted by train (40 minutes ride) with spotty internet and 0 problems because having a 15-30 minutes response time meant that I had enough buffer to get off the train and find some place with wifi with plenty of time to spare. > I definitely consider every hour of the day I'm on call (all 24 of them) as a working hour You'd be incorrect. We also don't do 24 hours shifts.
- sidlls 4y ago
  I wouldn't be incorrect: it's not even a matter of opinion. It literally is the definition of labor: being available to work on you employer's products and systems. This isn't debatable. And not every tech company has Google's on-call policy. The company I work for has team-defined shifts, generally these are one or two week rotations where the person on call is on call 24/7 during their rotation.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    This thread is about how Google's oncall policy is phenomenal. If you're complaining about other oncall policies, you're in the wrong place. "being available" is not in any definition of labor I've ever read. Reading a piece of fiction on my couch is not labor under any reasonable definition, because I am not working. Like if the trade off is Google's policy (2/3 time but freedom) or time and a half but you have to actually work the full weekend and you're expected to write code when not responding to incidents, which do you pick?
jeffbee 4y ago
At Google (in my experience), the tier-1 teams are not on-call 24 hours a day, they are on either 12 or 8 hour shifts. Being on a 24-hour on-call is ridiculous because as you say, there's no way you can actually do that.
- mikecoles 4y ago
  Checkout first responders on 24-48 shifts. Work for 24 hours, then off for 48. Being on-call for 24 is not ridiculous and is actually doable.
kqr 4y ago
What I don't get is why would you ever do regular 8-hour work for normal pay if you think it's an option to lounge around with a good book in your living room for 150 % the pay?

by sidlls 4y ago

ajross 4y ago

> On-call requires you to more or less not plan anything other than being available for work. No, it requires that you be able to stop whatever it is you're doing and be working on a problem within some latency tolerance (5m and 20m are cited upthread, for example). For most modern datacenter workloads, that can be as simple as "carry your laptop and stay within reliable coverage". While sure, that rules out a lot of activites, most of our lives are spent in that regime already.

sidlls 4y ago
The point is that for work you are required to be available to work at any given time during the shift, no different from being required to work during business hours in the office. It is work, period. Not free time. And it should be compensated accordingly (at least time and a half, when outside of normal business hours).
- robocat 4y ago
  Do whatever you want that leaves you available to be interrupted is nothing like work during work hours and maybe steal a some minutes to do what you want. There are plenty of things I do in my own time that can be interrupted: books, movies, HN, housework, etcetera.
  - nfhshy68 4y ago
    - Morgawr 4y ago
      > unpaid overtime Nobody is saying oncall should be unpaid, especially not in this subthread you're commenting on. Did you lose the thread of the conversation?
      - sidlls 4y ago
        Being paid at 2/3 base is technically not "unpaid" and it's better than most other tech companies, but it's hardly laudable. They're basically saying your life (literally--the time you spend on-call is time you never get back) is worth less when you're working for them, but outside office hours. I will probably never cease to be amazed at how naive software engineers can be. It's like the relatively high base salaries act as bedazzling enchantments that turn off parts of the rational brain.
        joshuamorton 4y ago
        No, they're saying the inconvenience of having to be (approximately) butt-in-desk doing your job is greater than the inconvenience of having to be near your home. And that is absolutely true.
        nfhshy68 4y ago
        It depends how much you value your time outside of your 40. I value it at time and a half. If you want me to work those hours at time and a half or you want me to sit by a phone both is fine but that's how much it costs. More than happy for the market to eat my lunch. I'll eat mine, uninterrupted.
    - robocat 4y ago
      > idiots https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nfhshy68 4y ago
  If my boss tried to tell me I had to keep my phone on, carry it around everywhere, and carry a laptop around and couldn't leave cell range I'd ask how much he was paying me to do that and for a new contract that laid out my new time and a half rate. Software developers aren't special, were not even operations staff. Just build stuff that fails gracefully and deal with it on Monday.
bigiain 4y ago
> that can be as simple as "carry your laptop and stay within reliable coverage" And be sober, and somewhere quiet enough you'll reliably hear/feel the notification, and be somewhere you can get that laptop out and type away at it for a while. I get _much_ less enjoyment from many social activities when I'm on call. I enjoy gigs way less. I enjoy parties way less. I pretty much wont go to movies. I hate being "on call" while out at dinner with friends. I will not go on a date while on call (at least not with somebody I don't know well enough for them to understand the on call obligations). > most of our lives are spent in that regime already But not all hours in my life are of equal "value" to me. A lot of the "most valuable and enjoyable times" get disproportionally affected by being on call. I care way less about potentially being paged at 2:30am on a Tuesday morning than I do about having to curtail social events on a Friday evening or a weekend. You _will_ need to pay me handsomely to do that, and guarantee it only rarely becomes my responsibility. Been there, done that, am perfectly happy to turn down job offers that don't understand that (or to walk away from companies who try and spring that on me later I've accepted).
- Morgawr 4y ago
  > And be sober Technically this is not a requirement. I've definitely known people going oncall while tipsy or at the pub, as long as you're not shitfaced drunk and physically unable to answer the page. Not that it's something I'd ever do or recommend doing, but it's technically not forbidden.

Morgawr 4y ago

I was oncall for 3 years at Google on a tier 2 rotation for a service that had very mild alerts (we did have some very common ones but they were mostly just noise with almost 0 actionable thing to do). Every time I was oncall during weekends or holidays (or outside work hours) it was just a normal day with the occasional "phone call". As long as I had my laptop with me and I had some kind of network coverage (which I did unless I went trekking in the non-existing mountains of Ireland, which I didn't during oncall days) it was fine. My coworkers in search or ads were a bit more stressed out on that though, I agree, having to ask their secondary to cover just for the 5-10 minutes they wanted to take a shower because they could not miss a single alert, but for us on a secondary service that was not a problem. I've had days where I commuted by train (40 minutes ride) with spotty internet and 0 problems because having a 15-30 minutes response time meant that I had enough buffer to get off the train and find some place with wifi with plenty of time to spare. > I definitely consider every hour of the day I'm on call (all 24 of them) as a working hour You'd be incorrect. We also don't do 24 hours shifts.

sidlls 4y ago
I wouldn't be incorrect: it's not even a matter of opinion. It literally is the definition of labor: being available to work on you employer's products and systems. This isn't debatable. And not every tech company has Google's on-call policy. The company I work for has team-defined shifts, generally these are one or two week rotations where the person on call is on call 24/7 during their rotation.
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  This thread is about how Google's oncall policy is phenomenal. If you're complaining about other oncall policies, you're in the wrong place. "being available" is not in any definition of labor I've ever read. Reading a piece of fiction on my couch is not labor under any reasonable definition, because I am not working. Like if the trade off is Google's policy (2/3 time but freedom) or time and a half but you have to actually work the full weekend and you're expected to write code when not responding to incidents, which do you pick?

jeffbee 4y ago

At Google (in my experience), the tier-1 teams are not on-call 24 hours a day, they are on either 12 or 8 hour shifts. Being on a 24-hour on-call is ridiculous because as you say, there's no way you can actually do that.

mikecoles 4y ago
Checkout first responders on 24-48 shifts. Work for 24 hours, then off for 48. Being on-call for 24 is not ridiculous and is actually doable.

kqr 4y ago

What I don't get is why would you ever do regular 8-hour work for normal pay if you think it's an option to lounge around with a good book in your living room for 150 % the pay?