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> But this is not normal. Our users not being able to shitpost is simply not worth my weekend or evening. It is completely normal for staff to have to work 24/

by sneak 1y ago

> But this is not normal. Our users not being able to shitpost is simply not worth my weekend or evening. It is completely normal for staff to have to work 24/7 for critical services. Plumbing, HVAC, power plant engineers, doctors, nurses, hospital support staff, taxi drivers, system and network engineers - these people keep our modern world alive, all day, every day. Weekends, midnights, holidays, every hour of every day someone is AT WORK to make sure our society functions. Not only is it normal, it is essential and required. It’s ok that you don’t like having to work nights or weekends or holidays. But some people absolutely have to. Be thankful there are EMTs and surgeons and power and network engineers working instead of being with their families on holidays or in the wee hours of the night.

xvector 1y ago
No one dies if our users can't shitpost until tomorrow morning. I'm glad there are people willing to do oncall. Especially for critical services. But the software engineering profession as a whole would benefit from negotiating concessions for oncall. We have normalized work interfering with life so the company can squeeze a couple extra millions from ads. And for what? Nontrivial amount of ad revenue lost? Not my problem if the company can't pay me to mitigate.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > Nontrivial amount of ad revenue lost? Not my problem if the company can't pay me to mitigate. Interestingly, when I worked on analytics around bugs we found that often (in the ads space), there actually wasn't an impact when advertisers were unable to create ads, as they just created all of them when the interface started working again. Now, if it had been the ad serving or pacing mechanisms then it would've been a lot of money, but not all outages are created equal.
- sneak 1y ago
  Not all websites are for shitposting. I can’t talk to my clients for whom I am on call because Signal is down. I also can’t communicate with my immediate family. There are tons of systems positively critical to society downstream from these services. Some can tolerate downtime. Many can’t.
  - dist-epoch 1y ago
    You could give them a Phone call, you know. Pretty reliable technology.
    - sneak 1y ago
      No, actually, I can’t. My phone doesn’t have a phone number and can’t make calls.
    - sneak 1y ago
      Also: do you think the telephone network has no oncall engineers?
guitarbill 1y ago
Nice try at guilt-tripping people doing on-call, and doing it for free. But to parent's points: if you call a plumber or HVAC tech at 3am, you'll pay for the privilege. And doctors and nurses have shifts/rotas. At some tech places, you are expected to do your day job plus on-call. For no overtime pay. "Salaried" in the US or something like that.
- xvector 1y ago
  And these companies often say "it's baked into your comp!" But you can typically get the same exact comp working an adjacent role with no oncall.
  - sneak 1y ago
    Then do that instead. What’s the problem with simply saying “no”?
    - xvector 1y ago
      Yup, that is precisely what I did and what I'm encouraging others to do as well. Edit: On-call is not always disclosed. When it is, it's often understated. And finally, you can never predict being re-orged into a team with oncall. I agree employees should still have the balls to say "no" but to imply there's no wrongdoing here on companies' parts and that it's totally okay for them to take advantage of employees like this is a bit strange. Especially for employees that don't know to ask this question (new grads) or can't say "no" as easily (new grads or H1Bs.)
    - baq 1y ago
      You’re looking for a job in this economy with a ‘he said no to being on call’ in your job history. This is plainly bad regulation, the market at large discovered the marginal price of oncall is zero, but it’s rather obviously skewed in employer’s favor.
- sneak 1y ago
  Guilt tripping? Quite the opposite. If you or anyone else are doing on-call for no additional pay, precisely nobody is forcing you to do that. Renegotiate, or switch jobs. It was either disclosed up front or you missed your chance to say “sorry, no” when asked to do additional work without additional pay. This is not a problem with on call but a problem with spineless people-pleasers. Every business will ask you for a better deal for them. If you say “sure” to everything you’re naturally going to lose out. It’s a mistake to do so, obviously. An employee’s lack of boundaries is not an employer’s fault.
milutinovici 1y ago
You know, there's this thing called shifts. You should look it up.

by sneak 1y ago

xvector 1y ago

No one dies if our users can't shitpost until tomorrow morning. I'm glad there are people willing to do oncall. Especially for critical services. But the software engineering profession as a whole would benefit from negotiating concessions for oncall. We have normalized work interfering with life so the company can squeeze a couple extra millions from ads. And for what? Nontrivial amount of ad revenue lost? Not my problem if the company can't pay me to mitigate.

disgruntledphd2 1y ago
> Nontrivial amount of ad revenue lost? Not my problem if the company can't pay me to mitigate. Interestingly, when I worked on analytics around bugs we found that often (in the ads space), there actually wasn't an impact when advertisers were unable to create ads, as they just created all of them when the interface started working again. Now, if it had been the ad serving or pacing mechanisms then it would've been a lot of money, but not all outages are created equal.
sneak 1y ago
Not all websites are for shitposting. I can’t talk to my clients for whom I am on call because Signal is down. I also can’t communicate with my immediate family. There are tons of systems positively critical to society downstream from these services. Some can tolerate downtime. Many can’t.
- dist-epoch 1y ago
  You could give them a Phone call, you know. Pretty reliable technology.
  - sneak 1y ago
    No, actually, I can’t. My phone doesn’t have a phone number and can’t make calls.
  - sneak 1y ago
    Also: do you think the telephone network has no oncall engineers?

guitarbill 1y ago

Nice try at guilt-tripping people doing on-call, and doing it for free. But to parent's points: if you call a plumber or HVAC tech at 3am, you'll pay for the privilege. And doctors and nurses have shifts/rotas. At some tech places, you are expected to do your day job plus on-call. For no overtime pay. "Salaried" in the US or something like that.

xvector 1y ago
And these companies often say "it's baked into your comp!" But you can typically get the same exact comp working an adjacent role with no oncall.
- sneak 1y ago
  Then do that instead. What’s the problem with simply saying “no”?
  - xvector 1y ago
    Yup, that is precisely what I did and what I'm encouraging others to do as well. Edit: On-call is not always disclosed. When it is, it's often understated. And finally, you can never predict being re-orged into a team with oncall. I agree employees should still have the balls to say "no" but to imply there's no wrongdoing here on companies' parts and that it's totally okay for them to take advantage of employees like this is a bit strange. Especially for employees that don't know to ask this question (new grads) or can't say "no" as easily (new grads or H1Bs.)
  - baq 1y ago
    You’re looking for a job in this economy with a ‘he said no to being on call’ in your job history. This is plainly bad regulation, the market at large discovered the marginal price of oncall is zero, but it’s rather obviously skewed in employer’s favor.
sneak 1y ago
Guilt tripping? Quite the opposite. If you or anyone else are doing on-call for no additional pay, precisely nobody is forcing you to do that. Renegotiate, or switch jobs. It was either disclosed up front or you missed your chance to say “sorry, no” when asked to do additional work without additional pay. This is not a problem with on call but a problem with spineless people-pleasers. Every business will ask you for a better deal for them. If you say “sure” to everything you’re naturally going to lose out. It’s a mistake to do so, obviously. An employee’s lack of boundaries is not an employer’s fault.

milutinovici 1y ago

You know, there's this thing called shifts. You should look it up.