4 ms·

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

by 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
  - bigiain 4y ago
    > If you want to pay me for availability that's fine, my rate is 1.5x. If you don't, that's fine too. While I agree with your sentiment, I don't think 1.5x for 48 hours for being on call over a weekend is a sensible or reasonable ask. Personally I'd be happy to manage/curtail the occasional weekend's social activity for 2 days pay (or time in lieu), at least as long as it's not as frequent as every month. While almost 2 weeks pay for being on call (and potentially never actually paged) would be nice, it's a kind of insane ask that just sends the wrong message in my opinion. If you don't want to do on call, just say so. Don't risk being mis interpreted as being a money-grubbing mercenary by pretending you'd be happy to do it for a high enough price that it would be totally impractical for most businesses to pay. (If you came to me with the demand for 72 hours pay for being on call over a weekend, I'd advertise your position with a "regular 1 web in 6 on call" in the job description explaining you get 2 days pay for being on call for a weekend, then PIP you out for being a jerk as soon as I could. You're looking a lot like either a money-grubbing mercenary, or a spectacularly bad communicator.)
    - ornornor 4y ago
      > a money-grubbing mercenary Yes, we should all be working for free for the sheer pleasure of changing the world, making VCs and company owners richer, and for the privilege of working under you. Come on, expecting to be paid for work shouldn’t be a fireable offense or a signal for you to look for a new chump that will accept a worse deal.
      - bigiain 4y ago
        Maybe I worded that badly. My point is that asking for 72 hours compensation for being on call over a weekend is unreasonable, and I will consider you unreasonable for asking that. Saying "No, I was never asked and never agreed to doing on call when I started, and I'm not going to agree to it now." is way way less unreasonable, in fact it's a perfectly reasonable response. Negotiating "more than free but less that 72 hours" is also perfectly reasonable, I'm not looking for "chumps" to do it for free. But if you tell me "2 weeks pay for a weekend of on call or GTFO!" I'm going to encourage you to keep your end of that ultimatum.Being _that_ unreasonable is the thing that's very very close to "a fireable offence" in my opinion. Quite where that line is drawn between "zero" and "72 hours" is certainly arguable, but I'd suggest its somewhat closer to zero than 72. Like I said, personally I've done it for 16 hours or 24 hours, and been happy enough with both. YMMV. I guess it also depends on your experience with how often your on call alerts go off, and how much time is typically spent actually doing anything while on call. For me, the worst I've ever had is for me to get paged once or twice on maybe 30% of my on call weekends, and typically spend less than 10 or 20 mins on the vast majority of those pages, with only very rare times when actual serious time is required, like maybe once or twice a year tops.
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.

by sidlls 4y ago

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
- bigiain 4y ago
  > If you want to pay me for availability that's fine, my rate is 1.5x. If you don't, that's fine too. While I agree with your sentiment, I don't think 1.5x for 48 hours for being on call over a weekend is a sensible or reasonable ask. Personally I'd be happy to manage/curtail the occasional weekend's social activity for 2 days pay (or time in lieu), at least as long as it's not as frequent as every month. While almost 2 weeks pay for being on call (and potentially never actually paged) would be nice, it's a kind of insane ask that just sends the wrong message in my opinion. If you don't want to do on call, just say so. Don't risk being mis interpreted as being a money-grubbing mercenary by pretending you'd be happy to do it for a high enough price that it would be totally impractical for most businesses to pay. (If you came to me with the demand for 72 hours pay for being on call over a weekend, I'd advertise your position with a "regular 1 web in 6 on call" in the job description explaining you get 2 days pay for being on call for a weekend, then PIP you out for being a jerk as soon as I could. You're looking a lot like either a money-grubbing mercenary, or a spectacularly bad communicator.)
  - ornornor 4y ago
    > a money-grubbing mercenary Yes, we should all be working for free for the sheer pleasure of changing the world, making VCs and company owners richer, and for the privilege of working under you. Come on, expecting to be paid for work shouldn’t be a fireable offense or a signal for you to look for a new chump that will accept a worse deal.
    - bigiain 4y ago
      Maybe I worded that badly. My point is that asking for 72 hours compensation for being on call over a weekend is unreasonable, and I will consider you unreasonable for asking that. Saying "No, I was never asked and never agreed to doing on call when I started, and I'm not going to agree to it now." is way way less unreasonable, in fact it's a perfectly reasonable response. Negotiating "more than free but less that 72 hours" is also perfectly reasonable, I'm not looking for "chumps" to do it for free. But if you tell me "2 weeks pay for a weekend of on call or GTFO!" I'm going to encourage you to keep your end of that ultimatum.Being _that_ unreasonable is the thing that's very very close to "a fireable offence" in my opinion. Quite where that line is drawn between "zero" and "72 hours" is certainly arguable, but I'd suggest its somewhat closer to zero than 72. Like I said, personally I've done it for 16 hours or 24 hours, and been happy enough with both. YMMV. I guess it also depends on your experience with how often your on call alerts go off, and how much time is typically spent actually doing anything while on call. For me, the worst I've ever had is for me to get paged once or twice on maybe 30% of my on call weekends, and typically spend less than 10 or 20 mins on the vast majority of those pages, with only very rare times when actual serious time is required, like maybe once or twice a year tops.

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.