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> 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 y

> 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.
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0xFACEFEED 2y ago
The difference is agency. Let's say I'm a business owner and I'm frustrated with the current state of the on-call system. I have options. I can try negotiating with my clients to lessen the load in some way. Obviously this isn't always possible but it often is. I once had a freelance project that required 24 hours of on-call after a release. I negotiated release days that were convenient for me (never Fri/Sat/Sun). One time the client pushed back, I pushed back harder, and I won. In order for my push back to work I ensured that I had enough negotiating strength to do that which I planned for ahead of time. I can upgrade my systems. For example if my current paging system is insufficient I can choose to pay $10/month more for another system that makes my life easier. I can set aside time to refactor my alerts code to make my life easier and I don't need to justify it to anyone but myself. I can straight up refuse to do on-call and deal with the consequences to my business. Freelancer developers do this all of the time. We choose which client work to do and not to do. We can make these choices arbitrarily. Sometimes it's seasonal. Sometimes it's just based on vibes. Doesn't matter; it's our company. Meanwhile the average on-call engineer at a large company has none of these freedoms. The underlying systems are chosen for them and they just have to deal with it.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > Meanwhile the average on-call engineer at a large company has none of these freedoms. The underlying systems are chosen for them and they just have to deal with it. In most cases they have all of those freedoms, and the only barrier is one that's shared with the self-employed person: not liking the consequences of choosing those options. They could negotiate with their manager to lessen the load. They could upgrade the systems. They could straight-up refuse on call. They don't because they don't like the consequences of taking these options—and neither does the self-employed person!
  - 0xFACEFEED 2y ago
    > not liking the consequences of choosing those options Correct. "Shove it" is usually preceded by not liking something. > They could negotiate with their manager to lessen the load. Most of the time the manager will simply refuse. As a business owner it's my decision. > They could upgrade the systems. At big companies this is usually outside the scope of an on-call engineer. The on-call engineer often doesn't even have commit rights to that repository. The specific example I gave was paying $10/month more. That can be a very hard sell at a large company because their service contracts are much more complicated/expensive. > They could straight-up refuse on call. A business owner has much more negotiating power than an employee does. > They don't because they don't like the consequences of taking these options—and neither does the self-employed person! In the vast majority of cases making changes to the on-call infrastructure has very little (if any) measurable impact on the business. Like spending a week making the systems better. Or changing deploy/release dates to be more convenient. As a business owner I can take advantage of this and make my life easier. As an employee I have layers of bureaucracy to wade through and will probably be refused. Not because it affects the business but for other reasons. That's the difference.
aoanevdus 2y ago
At Amazon it’s common to have terrible, week-long oncall shifts with many repetitive pages. At Google they have shifts that follow the sun and they get PTO to compensate for being oncall during the weekend. Both jobs pay similarly. And I think most people joining Amazon don’t know about the oncall they are in for.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > most people joining Amazon don’t know about the oncall they are in for. In general people joining Amazon should be aware that they're joining a company that is fiercely and proudly opposed to work-life balance.
ConspiracyFact 2y ago
This ultra-libertarian take is consistent but not realistic. Realistically, the group decides that some amount of work or sacrifice is not compatible with having a good life, so laws are passed that either disallow such extremes or mandate extreme compensation. This goes back to Shabbat/Sabbath.

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.

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0xFACEFEED 2y ago

The difference is agency. Let's say I'm a business owner and I'm frustrated with the current state of the on-call system. I have options. I can try negotiating with my clients to lessen the load in some way. Obviously this isn't always possible but it often is. I once had a freelance project that required 24 hours of on-call after a release. I negotiated release days that were convenient for me (never Fri/Sat/Sun). One time the client pushed back, I pushed back harder, and I won. In order for my push back to work I ensured that I had enough negotiating strength to do that which I planned for ahead of time. I can upgrade my systems. For example if my current paging system is insufficient I can choose to pay $10/month more for another system that makes my life easier. I can set aside time to refactor my alerts code to make my life easier and I don't need to justify it to anyone but myself. I can straight up refuse to do on-call and deal with the consequences to my business. Freelancer developers do this all of the time. We choose which client work to do and not to do. We can make these choices arbitrarily. Sometimes it's seasonal. Sometimes it's just based on vibes. Doesn't matter; it's our company. Meanwhile the average on-call engineer at a large company has none of these freedoms. The underlying systems are chosen for them and they just have to deal with it.

lolinder 2y ago
> Meanwhile the average on-call engineer at a large company has none of these freedoms. The underlying systems are chosen for them and they just have to deal with it. In most cases they have all of those freedoms, and the only barrier is one that's shared with the self-employed person: not liking the consequences of choosing those options. They could negotiate with their manager to lessen the load. They could upgrade the systems. They could straight-up refuse on call. They don't because they don't like the consequences of taking these options—and neither does the self-employed person!
- 0xFACEFEED 2y ago
  > not liking the consequences of choosing those options Correct. "Shove it" is usually preceded by not liking something. > They could negotiate with their manager to lessen the load. Most of the time the manager will simply refuse. As a business owner it's my decision. > They could upgrade the systems. At big companies this is usually outside the scope of an on-call engineer. The on-call engineer often doesn't even have commit rights to that repository. The specific example I gave was paying $10/month more. That can be a very hard sell at a large company because their service contracts are much more complicated/expensive. > They could straight-up refuse on call. A business owner has much more negotiating power than an employee does. > They don't because they don't like the consequences of taking these options—and neither does the self-employed person! In the vast majority of cases making changes to the on-call infrastructure has very little (if any) measurable impact on the business. Like spending a week making the systems better. Or changing deploy/release dates to be more convenient. As a business owner I can take advantage of this and make my life easier. As an employee I have layers of bureaucracy to wade through and will probably be refused. Not because it affects the business but for other reasons. That's the difference.

aoanevdus 2y ago

At Amazon it’s common to have terrible, week-long oncall shifts with many repetitive pages. At Google they have shifts that follow the sun and they get PTO to compensate for being oncall during the weekend. Both jobs pay similarly. And I think most people joining Amazon don’t know about the oncall they are in for.

lolinder 2y ago
> most people joining Amazon don’t know about the oncall they are in for. In general people joining Amazon should be aware that they're joining a company that is fiercely and proudly opposed to work-life balance.

ConspiracyFact 2y ago

This ultra-libertarian take is consistent but not realistic. Realistically, the group decides that some amount of work or sacrifice is not compatible with having a good life, so laws are passed that either disallow such extremes or mandate extreme compensation. This goes back to Shabbat/Sabbath.