As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

[Sysadmin] Routing to null

1192022242599

Posts

  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    I have never in my entire life gotten paid for being on call.

    I paid one of my staff for it once, but it was, "I can either tell you to come into the office tomorrow even though I don't know I'll need you, or I'll say you're on call and you agree to be here if I need you. Charge me for a shift."

    What is this I don't even.
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    How I usually see it work: Hourly folks get paid as soon as they respond to a text or pick up the phone, and we pay them 15 minute minimums. Salary folks pound sand.

    Result: Everyone finds a reason for their phone to not work. Nobody is interested in an on-call rotation. We stop offering after-hours service.

    How I would prefer it work, and negotiated with staff and upper management, only to be shot in the back at the last second by upper management: Hourly folks get standby pay for nights/weekends when they're on-call, full pay when they take a call, bonus pay if they go to a tower site for resolution, bonus pay if they go to a customer location for resolution. Salary folks get the option of comp time or overtime.

    I'd tell you the results but I got shot in the back. Because our after-hours call rate was so low. Because they still didn't hear me when I told them we weren't offering 24/7 service, but could if there were incentives and a rotation.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • Dizzy DDizzy D NetherlandsRegistered User regular
    Mugsley wrote: »
    Help with a debate here at the office. What's your pay structure like for people who are on-call?

    If you're on-call but at home, do you charge hours only if you have to come in? Do you charge hours if you have to pick up a phone? Do you get paid just for being on-call (i.e. the "time commitment" because you have to be in the area).



    ---
    Also I had friends in banking and that progress metrics thing was definitely a thing back in the heady days of low interest credit cards. It wasn't that you weren't getting people to sign up. It was that you weren't getting more people to sign up than you did last month, or at least at the same increasing rate than the past few months.

    And, yet, no one at any level of management apparently understood how quickly you would run out of people on the Earth.

    For our company (we provide IT services for other companies, so that may be a big difference compared to in-house IT):
    Customers have to ask for one of us to be on call outside regular hours (mo-fr, 7am-7pm) and generally give an indication of what they will be doing that they need one of us to be on-call for (working on Application X, which ties into mail, DNS etc. so we can figure out who needs to be on call if specific knowledge/skills are needed.)

    - 15% per hour for being on call. (have to respond within X minutes, have to be online within Y minutes).
    - 150% if you are actually called, minimum 4 hours. (Note; we are 2nd line support, our helpdesk generally gets 15% for being on-call and creates a ticket and notifies us.) And then we have some dutch laws that determine whether you have to compensate those hours later, because we have pretty strict rules in how much overtime a week you are allowed and how much minimum time there is between shifts.

    Steam/Origin: davydizzy
  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    Thawmus wrote: »
    How I usually see it work: Hourly folks get paid as soon as they respond to a text or pick up the phone, and we pay them 15 minute minimums. Salary folks pound sand.

    Result: Everyone finds a reason for their phone to not work. Nobody is interested in an on-call rotation. We stop offering after-hours service.

    How I would prefer it work, and negotiated with staff and upper management, only to be shot in the back at the last second by upper management: Hourly folks get standby pay for nights/weekends when they're on-call, full pay when they take a call, bonus pay if they go to a tower site for resolution, bonus pay if they go to a customer location for resolution. Salary folks get the option of comp time or overtime.

    I'd tell you the results but I got shot in the back. Because our after-hours call rate was so low. Because they still didn't hear me when I told them we weren't offering 24/7 service, but could if there were incentives and a rotation.

    I mean, for our routine on call there was just a rotating staff list. It's your week on call. If it's more than 15 minutes, take it out of your day shift.

    It started to fall apart, though, when people started looping in resources who weren't on that week's call list, which drove more and more toward only a few people always being "on call" because only they really understood the recent VLAN issues, for example.

    What is this I don't even.
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Aioua wrote: »
    One of the hospitals I worked for back when I was a contractor paid quarter-time to the FTEs for their on-call standby hours. But yeah it's pretty non standard. (Standby pay probably should be standard but well let me point you over to the Unions thread in DnD...)

    If you're hourly, you should legally be getting paid from the moment you pick up your phone/VPN in. Even if it's 10 minutes and oh look a false alarm and you never had to put pants on, you still worked.

    Salary is a bit different cause hours are lol. Every place I've worked that wasn't jerks about it would let you comp that time. Oh you were stuck on a call for two hours last night? Leave two hours early on Friday. If they expect you to just eat it they can, legally, but that gets me firing up the old LinkedIn.

    TBH, if you're on call you should be getting paid for the entire fucking time you're on call. Why? Because you legitimately cannot have plans or do anything and you're putting your life on hold.

    I'm of the opinion that on call should be illegal and if you require 24/7 service you should hire people to fucking work it.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    If you can't afford to pay staff to be your after hours operators, perhaps you shouldn't be offering 24/7 service, change my fucking mind.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    If you can't afford to pay staff to be your after hours operators, perhaps you shouldn't be offering 24/7 service, change my fucking mind.

    My team was 24/7 with a full staff at all hours but still always needed escalation paths. If someone is asleep and on call they're only being woken up when someone else has started the troubleshooting and realized, "I need Bowen because this is definitely an issue with X product and he deployed the changes."

    What is this I don't even.
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    If you can't afford to pay staff to be your after hours operators, perhaps you shouldn't be offering 24/7 service, change my fucking mind.

    My team was 24/7 with a full staff at all hours but still always needed escalation paths. If someone is asleep and on call they're only being woken up when someone else has started the troubleshooting and realized, "I need Bowen because this is definitely an issue with X product and he deployed the changes."

    They should, indeed, have staff that can be escalated to 24/7, is what I am saying, or don't offer 24/7 service. There's really no need unless you're servicing like, a hospital or are some required technology service (ISP/electrical) and trust me, the energy companies pay out the nose to have after hours and emergency technicians (the emergency ones tend to be normal staff escalated to like in your example, but they're paid fucking handsomly).

    The fact that people in tech put up with this at all is baffling, all it takes is everyone agreeing that "no I will not answer the phone while I'm eating dinner or out to the movies, sorry" and it gets fixed, because the CEOs and CFOs can absolutely afford to do it, they just don't want to because they've got people worried they might lose their jobs if they say no once, ever. But this is, again, a collective action problem, because if the 20 year old who just graduated says yes because they literally do not give a shit and want to keep their job, it fucks everyone else over. Just like the 20 year old who takes a 50% paycut just to get a job to pay school bills while living with mom and dad fucks everyone else over.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    Ours is a mechanical situation, but there's been some discussion about this. We have 24/5 testing operations, and management is trying to keep from burning people out by having them come in for shift work when things likely won't break.

    So I had heard some input from younger engineers regarding the fact you should be paid for on-call time, even if you don't get called in for support, so I was curious how you guys handled it since you've discussed it quite often in the past. To be clear, this would be something like, "[X pipe] is leaking water and we had to shut down the test equipment so it wouldn't overheat," or, "The flow rate to [equipment] isn't above its lower limit and we don't know why," or something of that nature.

    There are some juniors who (maybe rightly so) argue that senior engineers should be the ones handling on-call work since they would be the ones capable of making changes or fixing problems, depending on the severity.

    I'm a bit on the fence, personally. Initially, my stance was that you shouldn't get paid until you get called for assistance or have to come into the facility. Reading the responses above and thinking about it more, offering something like 1/4 or 1/2 time to the person on-call, for their on-call hours, would be a reasonable incentive for someone to keep a phone on, be sober, and be within 1hr drive, overnight.

  • AiouaAioua Ora Occidens Ora OptimaRegistered User regular
    I have on-call weeks but at least they're not 24/7, we split the time with our sister team in India.

    life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
    fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
    that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
    bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    If y'all are requiring someone to drop everything to come into work, it should be paid time just like if someone was physically in the seat at work for that shift.

    There's literally no difference other than "things probably won't go wrong!" Things probably won't go wrong in my day to day as well.

    Someone getting tossed $40 for an hour of work at 2am is garbage and I don't blame the younger engineers not wanting to budge on that. Better yet, just hire someone for the midnight shift like they used to do back in the 70s before people figured out you could just not pay people and force them to come in after hours at threat of losing their job and pennies on the dollar for what you're saving.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    my opinion on on call has always been that it should be treated as, and compensated as, an emergency. And it should be communicated to people that if you call that number, it should be an emergency.

    In my ideal world, someone holding an on call phone would be paid $x just to hold the phone for the time you are on call. Doesn't have to be an absurdly high amount, but someone should be compensated for the fact that they do have to be prepared to drop everything if a call comes in.

    And then my real big thing, if someone calls the on call number, that's a 3 hour charge, minimum. If it's the CEO calling because he/she can't find the oulook icon on their desktop, 3 hours of time. Period. End. and you make damned sure all staff know what the charge is if they call.

    Make it expensive to users actually do think twice about it.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • MyiagrosMyiagros Registered User regular
    Only job I did on call at was a set wage for the week you were on call. Clients already paid a monthly fee for their regular service plus extra for the on call service. Didn't stop some morons from using the on call for stupid shit, or calling at 7:45 as I'm driving to work instead of waiting an extra 15 and calling the office.

    iRevert wrote: »
    Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
    Steam: MyiagrosX27
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    my opinion on on call has always been that it should be treated as, and compensated as, an emergency. And it should be communicated to people that if you call that number, it should be an emergency.

    In my ideal world, someone holding an on call phone would be paid $x just to hold the phone for the time you are on call. Doesn't have to be an absurdly high amount, but someone should be compensated for the fact that they do have to be prepared to drop everything if a call comes in.

    And then my real big thing, if someone calls the on call number, that's a 3 hour charge, minimum. If it's the CEO calling because he/she can't find the oulook icon on their desktop, 3 hours of time. Period. End. and you make damned sure all staff know what the charge is if they call.

    Make it expensive to users actually do think twice about it.

    Better yet, put the money directly in the tech's pocket. No one gets to see any penny of that time except the person working on call.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    wunderbar wrote: »
    my opinion on on call has always been that it should be treated as, and compensated as, an emergency. And it should be communicated to people that if you call that number, it should be an emergency.

    In my ideal world, someone holding an on call phone would be paid $x just to hold the phone for the time you are on call. Doesn't have to be an absurdly high amount, but someone should be compensated for the fact that they do have to be prepared to drop everything if a call comes in.

    And then my real big thing, if someone calls the on call number, that's a 3 hour charge, minimum. If it's the CEO calling because he/she can't find the oulook icon on their desktop, 3 hours of time. Period. End. and you make damned sure all staff know what the charge is if they call.

    Make it expensive to users actually do think twice about it.

    Better yet, put the money directly in the tech's pocket. No one gets to see any penny of that time except the person working on call.

    I mean, yes. That's actually what I meant. If I get a call for on call, it's 3 hours of time for the person taking the call. minimum.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    It's a bit of a pain for us since we're a govt entity. God forbid the American Taxpayer pays for a guy to watch YT vids on his couch while on-call and anyone find out about it. I don't know what the right answer is, and there should be some HR policy about on-call work but I'm not even sure where to start looking (not that it would matter).

  • DrovekDrovek Registered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    If you can't afford to pay staff to be your after hours operators, perhaps you shouldn't be offering 24/7 service, change my fucking mind.

    My team was 24/7 with a full staff at all hours but still always needed escalation paths. If someone is asleep and on call they're only being woken up when someone else has started the troubleshooting and realized, "I need Bowen because this is definitely an issue with X product and he deployed the changes."

    They should, indeed, have staff that can be escalated to 24/7, is what I am saying, or don't offer 24/7 service. There's really no need unless you're servicing like, a hospital or are some required technology service (ISP/electrical) and trust me, the energy companies pay out the nose to have after hours and emergency technicians (the emergency ones tend to be normal staff escalated to like in your example, but they're paid fucking handsomly).

    The fact that people in tech put up with this at all is baffling, all it takes is everyone agreeing that "no I will not answer the phone while I'm eating dinner or out to the movies, sorry" and it gets fixed, because the CEOs and CFOs can absolutely afford to do it, they just don't want to because they've got people worried they might lose their jobs if they say no once, ever. But this is, again, a collective action problem, because if the 20 year old who just graduated says yes because they literally do not give a shit and want to keep their job, it fucks everyone else over. Just like the 20 year old who takes a 50% paycut just to get a job to pay school bills while living with mom and dad fucks everyone else over.

    This has been mostly my thought about it for some time: pay for a follow-the-sun operation or don't bother expecting 24/7 with on-call.

    Where I am, I get more or less 1/8th of my monthly take-home pay for a week of on-call. To be honest, I would pretty much prefer no on-call at all (the bastards sneaked that up on me after signing up) but if not, at least some good compensation because that is time I cannot use freely.

    steam_sig.png( < . . .
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    At this point in the game if someone said "oh yeah and you have to be on call" I'd just be like "nah" and let them fire me over it.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    At this point in the game if someone said "oh yeah and you have to be on call" I'd just be like "nah" and let them fire me over it.

    In my experience they won't fire you, they'll just do everything they can to make your job suck, including calling and texting you after hours anyway on your personal phone, and hope you just quit.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    At this point in the game if someone said "oh yeah and you have to be on call" I'd just be like "nah" and let them fire me over it.

    In my experience they won't fire you, they'll just do everything they can to make your job suck, including calling and texting you after hours anyway on your personal phone, and hope you just quit.

    I barely even acknowledge my own family, they'll have to try harder than that.

    Also I can just block them.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    I will literally just put my cell phone on mute and ignore it for a week, I've done it before!

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    IMO, there are two different meanings for being on-call.

    1) Formal on-call, where there's a certain agreed-upon response time, perhaps even an SLA, and you have on-call shifts. This is common in devops.
    2) Informal on-call, where there's no agreed-upon response time and therefore no expectation of immediate response, but a more casual agreement that you make a best effort.

    #2 just comes with the job IMO. I expect my employer to call me if all of our servers have crashed on a Sunday. However, I should be able to say "Sorry, I was in a movie" or "I was asleep" when they ask me why I didn't pick up the phone right away. To be honest, I don't think that this is really that big of an industry collective action problem. I haven't seen this abused very much. And I also don't think it's reasonable to draw a bright line that you can never ever call me after hours. Even if we have coverage, I'd still rather know when things go wrong, because I don't want to walk into a mess when I do come back into the office.

    I've had bad experiences with #1. That's where I think employers are simply offloading the responsibility for keeping up on adequate staffing level onto on-call technicians. If I'm on Pacific time and we have staff on the Eastern seaboard, such that a system outage at 6am is likely a work stoppage during our official business hours, then we need to pay somebody to be available at 6am. If our posted office hours include Saturday, then we need to pay somebody to be available on Saturday.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    I have 100% seen abuse of #2 in at least two different jobs, including my current one. This is why I'm in favor of #1.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    I have 100% seen abuse of #2 in at least two different jobs, including my current one. This is why I'm in favor of #1.

    The exact opposite of my experience.

    What kinds of abuses have you encountered?

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    It's entirely dependent upon the company you work for whether or not they abuse things like on-call and overtime.

  • BucketmanBucketman Call me SkraggRegistered User regular
    I use to work for a CELL PHONE store that assigned each employee a google voice number and router it to your cell phone. We were suppose to only be around for sales calls, but come on, you know it wasn't. I got maybe 4 calls in the 9 months I worked there. All tech support issues and all at like 11 PM or 2 AM. We, of course, were not paid for this.

    That place sucked

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    To me, I think asking all #2 to formally shift to #1 just isn't reasonable and makes things worse in aggregate.

    I really don't want to be surprised by an emergency when I walk in the door, especially one that I could have easily resolved the night before.

    I don't want to add IT operational costs to have somebody sitting around at night doing nothing waiting for an emergency.

    I also don't want to take formal on-call shifts where I have to watch my phone. I want to be able to fuck my girlfriend on a Saturday morning without being like "sorry honey, I can't, i'm on call"

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    To me, I think asking all #2 to formally shift to #1 just isn't reasonable and makes things worse in aggregate.

    I really don't want to be surprised by an emergency when I walk in the door, especially one that I could have easily resolved the night before.

    I don't want to add IT operational costs to have somebody sitting around at night doing nothing waiting for an emergency.

    I also don't want to take formal on-call shifts where I have to watch my phone. I want to be able to fuck my girlfriend on a Saturday morning without being like "sorry honey, I can't, i'm on call"

    I think the mistake you're making is thinking that all companies are as respectful when it comes to #2.

    They aren't.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • schussschuss Registered User regular
    Seriously though, how do I get some of those dumpster fire stickers?

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Thawmus wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    To me, I think asking all #2 to formally shift to #1 just isn't reasonable and makes things worse in aggregate.

    I really don't want to be surprised by an emergency when I walk in the door, especially one that I could have easily resolved the night before.

    I don't want to add IT operational costs to have somebody sitting around at night doing nothing waiting for an emergency.

    I also don't want to take formal on-call shifts where I have to watch my phone. I want to be able to fuck my girlfriend on a Saturday morning without being like "sorry honey, I can't, i'm on call"

    I think the mistake you're making is thinking that all companies are as respectful when it comes to #2.

    They aren't.

    If they expect an immediate response and can't take "sorry, I was in a movie" for an answer then that's not what I'm talking about.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Being on call is the fucking worst.

    My last job paid 25 cents per call. Per fucking call.

    Let me put it to you like this: Some dude called at 9 pm with a downed ATM. I fixed it. 25 cents.

    Someone else called with a downed ATM. At 3 in the fucking morning. I fixed it. 25 cents.

    Someone called at 10:30 AM on a Saturday because their servers were completely down because some dipshit in my company deployed a registry "fix" that overwrote all of the domain information in the registry for every single fucking customer we had, so I was on the phone for 12 hours spinning up new machines and pulling data from our backup server.

    25. Fucking. Cents.

    jungleroomx on
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Thawmus wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    To me, I think asking all #2 to formally shift to #1 just isn't reasonable and makes things worse in aggregate.

    I really don't want to be surprised by an emergency when I walk in the door, especially one that I could have easily resolved the night before.

    I don't want to add IT operational costs to have somebody sitting around at night doing nothing waiting for an emergency.

    I also don't want to take formal on-call shifts where I have to watch my phone. I want to be able to fuck my girlfriend on a Saturday morning without being like "sorry honey, I can't, i'm on call"

    I think the mistake you're making is thinking that all companies are as respectful when it comes to #2.

    They aren't.

    If they expect an immediate response and can't take "sorry, I was in a movie" for an answer then that's not what I'm talking about.

    Well that's kinda my point, you've boxed this into just 2 possible scenarios but there are more than that. There are companies that don't line up a rotation, don't specify an expected response time (and attempts to get this specified are met with: "Well, just in a reasonable amount of time!"), don't pay you when you take calls, and when you don't take a call because you were at a movie, taking a shower, watching a baseball game out of town, or fucking your girlfriend, well boy howdy do you hear about it and now there's a new topic at the weekly staff meeting about how some nameless people need to get more committed in their off-hours. Add customers to this mix, and now suddenly having a rotation and getting standby pay is preferable to the alternative.

    And then, of course, you look elsewhere for a job because fuck that shit entirely, if you can.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Thawmus wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Thawmus wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    To me, I think asking all #2 to formally shift to #1 just isn't reasonable and makes things worse in aggregate.

    I really don't want to be surprised by an emergency when I walk in the door, especially one that I could have easily resolved the night before.

    I don't want to add IT operational costs to have somebody sitting around at night doing nothing waiting for an emergency.

    I also don't want to take formal on-call shifts where I have to watch my phone. I want to be able to fuck my girlfriend on a Saturday morning without being like "sorry honey, I can't, i'm on call"

    I think the mistake you're making is thinking that all companies are as respectful when it comes to #2.

    They aren't.

    If they expect an immediate response and can't take "sorry, I was in a movie" for an answer then that's not what I'm talking about.

    Well that's kinda my point, you've boxed this into just 2 possible scenarios but there are more than that.

    Either they have an SLA or they don't. Maybe their SLA is implicit, but it's pretty easy to make it explicit.


    Thawmus wrote: »
    There are companies that don't line up a rotation, don't specify an expected response time (and attempts to get this specified are met with: "Well, just in a reasonable amount of time!"), don't pay you when you take calls, and when you don't take a call because you were at a movie, taking a shower, watching a baseball game out of town, or fucking your girlfriend, well boy howdy do you hear about it and now there's a new topic at the weekly staff meeting about how some nameless people need to get more committed in their off-hours.

    Yep, I've been in these conversations. The immediate question I have is:

    "Okay, so what's a reasonable response time? 15 minutes? Two hours? What if I'm in a movie or taking a shower?"

    That is usually enough to get people to back off. If it isn't, then follow up questions like

    "So, is that the expectation 24/7? At 3am, I'm supposed to answer my phone in an hour or less? If I'm on a date with my girlfriend?"

    If the employer comes back and says

    "Well, we expect a response time in X minutes between the hours of Y and Z."

    then we've established an explicit SLA and we've moved into scenario #1. That's the situation where, yeah, I agree, time to look for a new job, because scenario #1 sucks.

    But most of the time, that pushback is enough to get them to back off, get back into scenario #2, which I prefer.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Yeah that's not my experience. My experience is that they still refuse to be pinned down to specifics and keep the situation intentionally hostile.

    To be clear, the questions you suggest do get asked, but they're met with exasperation instead of professional answers.

    Thawmus on
    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    I mean I kind of agree with feral, if something is on fire I maybe want to know.

    But I also want to get paid double time for coming in on my free time to put out your fire. I think that's an okay response to it. That it's become so acceptable in tech for us to just kind of always be available is troubling and we should all have a problem with that, even if some of us only get bothered once every 8 months for a few hours (like me).

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Thawmus wrote: »
    Yeah that's not my experience. My experience is that they still refuse to be pinned down to specifics and keep the situation intentionally hostile.

    To be clear, the questions you suggest do get asked, but they're met with exasperation instead of professional answers.

    Every time I've tried to have the conversation feral has it's always "ASAP, drop what you're doing. This is your job. If you don't like it find a new one"

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • SeidkonaSeidkona Had an upgrade Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    At my old job it was "This is what you're paid for."

    So I eventually noped out on them because it wasn't enough for what they expected across the board. It was all made worse by how cheap the place was and how old the equipment was.

    Seidkona on
    Mostly just huntin' monsters.
    XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
  • ThawmusThawmus +Jackface Registered User regular
    At this job I attempted to get them to either nail down the hours or be reasonable about response times. They were going to be neither so I just nixxed our 24/7 service hours entirely.

    And yeah, I like to know about stuff going on before I come into work, too, but...I can't remember the last time someone told me something was down and I didn't know about it already via Nagios and/or UPS notifications.

    Twitch: Thawmus83
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    And if your business is so critical that it needs to be 24/7, then, well, hire people to be there 24/7.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    There's a reason it's expensive to have that kind of SLA and 99.999% uptime.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
This discussion has been closed.