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There's a big difference, though. In your case, you're the only employee of your business. And if you're not there the business will literally go under. And yo

There's a big difference, though. In your case, you're the only employee of your business. And if you're not there the business will literally go under. And you also get directly rewarded for being there. I would guess that being 'on call' in this manner is possibly less draining on a person's soul (depending on how well they tolerate the risk of owning a business). Contrast that with being 'on call' for your megacorporation, who isn't giving you anything extra for your on call time because they 'already pay you enough'. And where the only negative consequence for the company if you fail to immediately respond within 15 minutes is that some executive in the company is kept waiting longer than 15 minutes, or some ads aren't being shown for 15 minutes. But if you aren't there, your boss is going to get a phone call and that's definitely not going to look good on you. And there's no bonus for fixing the problem, that was already your job in the first place. Sucks that you had to do it outside of scheduled hours, oh well. I'm with the author of this article. Take your on-call rotation and shove it (if you're a large corporation). I'm fortunate enough to be able to take a firm stance on this point, and do so happily.

lolinder 2y ago
> And you also get directly rewarded for being there. ... Contrast that with being 'on call' for your megacorporation, who isn't giving you anything extra for your on call time because they 'already pay you enough'. I'm really not seeing the distinction here. If a company offers a salary and includes on-call as part of the deal (and communicates that up front so it's not a bait and switch), how is that different than running your own business and getting compensated for your on-call time as part of a package that you sell to a client? In both cases you agree up front that you will be part of an on-call plan. In neither case are you getting a bonus for doing a good job at on-call, because either way you're just doing your job that you committed to ahead of time! I'm totally sympathetic to people who don't want to be part of an on-call. Jobs that have on-call aren't for you, that's fine. But I don't get this idea that it's uncompensated labor, unless there are tons of people out there who somehow ended up in jobs that sprung on-call on them without warning.
- Macha 2y ago
  The big difference is as an owner you are fully in control of allocating your time, and so if out of hours workload is becoming too much, you can choose to not work on other things in favour of fixing that. In the corporate world, there's some manager who weighs up spending two weeks to properly fix an issue or automate a process vs just making their workers unhappy and doing something that will make the manager look good in the internal politics, and often will insist on the latter.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    But that's the problem with being in a bad company no matter what. If it weren't on call it would be something else that that manager would be making you suffer through. That doesn't mean on-call as a concept is terrible or that it's uncompensated labor, it just means that bad managers are capable of screwing up your life with any tools that you give them.
    - Macha 2y ago
      Bad managers are hard to predict. Even if you like your manager now, there's nothing to say they can't be promoted/reassigned/quit and you get a new manager that sucks. On-call being a thing is easier to get an answer on ahead of time
      - lolinder 2y ago
        But it's meaningless a signal for bad managers because basically everyone does on call in some form. That's what this whole discussion is about: how ubiquitous it is. The only job I worked that didn't have a formal on-call rotation ended up with me unofficially on on-call, with the same expectations as though that had been set up up front: boss calls whenever he calls and expecting an answer, and I'm left deciding how badly I want this job. Turns out management there sucked and I ended up on on-call after all. If you find a company that actually has a good story for why they're able to get away with no on call, that might be a good signal. But if they're out there I'd love to hear from them, because most people here are just speculating about better alternatives, not speaking from experience with ones that actually worked.

lolinder 2y ago

> And you also get directly rewarded for being there. ... Contrast that with being 'on call' for your megacorporation, who isn't giving you anything extra for your on call time because they 'already pay you enough'. I'm really not seeing the distinction here. If a company offers a salary and includes on-call as part of the deal (and communicates that up front so it's not a bait and switch), how is that different than running your own business and getting compensated for your on-call time as part of a package that you sell to a client? In both cases you agree up front that you will be part of an on-call plan. In neither case are you getting a bonus for doing a good job at on-call, because either way you're just doing your job that you committed to ahead of time! I'm totally sympathetic to people who don't want to be part of an on-call. Jobs that have on-call aren't for you, that's fine. But I don't get this idea that it's uncompensated labor, unless there are tons of people out there who somehow ended up in jobs that sprung on-call on them without warning.

Macha 2y ago
The big difference is as an owner you are fully in control of allocating your time, and so if out of hours workload is becoming too much, you can choose to not work on other things in favour of fixing that. In the corporate world, there's some manager who weighs up spending two weeks to properly fix an issue or automate a process vs just making their workers unhappy and doing something that will make the manager look good in the internal politics, and often will insist on the latter.
- lolinder 2y ago
  But that's the problem with being in a bad company no matter what. If it weren't on call it would be something else that that manager would be making you suffer through. That doesn't mean on-call as a concept is terrible or that it's uncompensated labor, it just means that bad managers are capable of screwing up your life with any tools that you give them.
  - Macha 2y ago
    Bad managers are hard to predict. Even if you like your manager now, there's nothing to say they can't be promoted/reassigned/quit and you get a new manager that sucks. On-call being a thing is easier to get an answer on ahead of time
    - lolinder 2y ago
      But it's meaningless a signal for bad managers because basically everyone does on call in some form. That's what this whole discussion is about: how ubiquitous it is. The only job I worked that didn't have a formal on-call rotation ended up with me unofficially on on-call, with the same expectations as though that had been set up up front: boss calls whenever he calls and expecting an answer, and I'm left deciding how badly I want this job. Turns out management there sucked and I ended up on on-call after all. If you find a company that actually has a good story for why they're able to get away with no on call, that might be a good signal. But if they're out there I'd love to hear from them, because most people here are just speculating about better alternatives, not speaking from experience with ones that actually worked.