Employer introducing on-call without contract clause or compensation, advice needed
Posted by Odd-Drummer3447@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 250 comments
I'm a Senior Developer in the Netherlands, starting a new role a couple of months ago. My employer just shared an on-call schedule that includes me for the Christmas holidays (yes, including Dec.25 too).
Situation
- On-call duties were NOT mentioned during hiring or in my employment contract.
- Requirements: 24-hour availability, have laptop/phone ready, be sober enough to respond professionally.
- No compensation or time-off-in-lieu mentioned.
After checking with colleagues, NONE of them have on-call in their contracts either. This appears to be a new policy being introduced for the first time.
Christmas is particularly important to me as I haven't seen my family in a year.
My plan
I'm considering privately messaging my manager to discuss:
- Reduced on-call window (business hours instead of 24 hours)
- Compensation (extra vacation day or pay)
- Formal contract amendment for future on-call expectations
Questions for other devs
1. Am I being unreasonable pushing back on this, or is this a legitimate concern?
2. For those in the Netherlands/EU: what are typical on-call arrangements and compensation?
Three years ago I quit a company because right after I finished the trial period, they told me that every dev was obliged to be on-call one week per month, and no compensation was provided. No one told me that during the hiring process, and it was not included in the contract. Again, in the Netherlands.
I want to be professional and collaborative, but also set healthy boundaries.
Any advice from those who've navigated similar situations?
klimaheizung@reddit
Inform your manager that they made a mistake to include you into to on-call and that they should move you out since it would cause misunderstandings.
After doing so you have established that 1.) they have no grounds in putting you there and 2.) you are willing to accept that as a mistake (because otherwise it would be a break of trust).
If your manager says "no, you misunderstand, this is for everyone" then you reply "that cannot be, my contract says otherwise and I would have never agreed to such clauses because Christmas is holy to me and I already have important plans. Please check my contract again with HR".
At that point they can only retort with "it's not in the contract, but everyone does it (blabla) so we would like to..." and that's the point were you just ignore everything they say and reply "I'm happy to discuss the terms of paid on-call, but until we have a signed agreement, I will not be available for any on-call that goes beyond my contract."
If you get back any kind of unprofessional response, complain with HR and your managers manager.
If none of that works, just don't do the on-call and slowly start looking for another job, because this company will just make things worse and worse.
dantheman91@reddit
I work at a fang adjacent, we pay our senior engs about 500k. We do not pay extra for on call, if you tried that you would most likely be looking for new employment soon.
It's not in my contract but in the US with at will employment that doesn't really matter
Dro-Darsha@reddit
I am pretty sure a regular dev in Europe doesn’t get paid 500k
okmarshall@reddit
I'm not convinced a dev at any level gets paid 500k in Europe.
grilledcheesestand@reddit
High level enough in big tech gets it for sure in the Netherlands (total comp), but it's pretty damn rare.
Type-21@reddit
Someone in Europe gets 40k after taxes and is expected to do the same?
HK-65@reddit
Dutch senior engineer pay was past six figures even 3-5 years ago.
tinmanjk@reddit
after taxes?
HK-65@reddit
I moved away already, but at my department of non-big-tech run of the mill Amsterdam scaleup, the average pay for a senior engineer on my team was 120k back in 2023. We might have been a slight outlier, but there was also turnover because there were other places paying better.
After taxes, that makes for 71k, 6200 EUR if you have been in the country for a while, but with the expat tax rate we all got for the first 5 years, that is 91k, 7800 EUR per month.
My apartment back then was a 95 sqm penthouse in Rotterdam, rent was controlled and set at 1500 EUR. Health insurance was US-style, privatised, the best all inclusive plan that had dental coverage was 116 EUR per month, no other payment, valid for all providers.
And I practically couldn't be fired, even layoffs were super hard to do, we self-reported for unlimited sick leave - meaning if you burnt out you could practically take a sabbatical for a few months at 2/3 pay, and if you felt under the weather you could just put in a day by Slack message.
All in all I'm saying that getting a 100-140k EUR job in the NL is much easier than getting a 500k USD one in the US, and I would have to think very hard about which to accept if offered both, especially with all the layoffs nowadays. The NL job pretty much means that you are employed at that rate as long as the company exists or you find something better.
Oh, and then there are conversion rates, 120k EUR is 140k USD. So technically the average senior pay in my team based on our temporary expat tax rates was actually 6 figures in USD after taxes.
My point is that there is literally no point to comparing EU and US jobs just based on salaries, even after taxes. My buddy at that same company had a huge Excel sheet that gave him a "salary after taxes and fixed costs at local purchasing power" when he was job hunting, and even that needed a "notes" column to account for local labour laws and other stuff.
Swamplord42@reddit
Europe is a continent with many different countries, different income levels and different taxation.
Switzerland is in Europe and Senior average get 6 figures after taxes pretty easily.
Type-21@reddit
This is cherry picking and not useful for the discussion
Which-World-6533@reddit
Seniors at FAANG adjacent in most of EU / UK don't get paid 500 k. If you tried to get them to do on-call without compensation, and including Xmas they would laugh in your face and then start looking for a more sane company to work for.
box_of_hornets@reddit
If it's in the contract then sure
dashingThroughSnow12@reddit
Usually there will be a catch all clause.
wobblydramallama@reddit
US rules thankfully don't apply to EU
FinestObligations@reddit
EU and US are not the same. Quite a lot of EU countries have very strong worker rights laws like legislation for on-call and a minimum amount of vacation days employees are obligated to take.
arktozc@reddit
Also: why wont you do the same thing I do just for 1/10 of my compensation?
BeABetterHumanBeing@reddit
Unless your contract specifically says 'no', this is not true.
spline_reticulator@reddit
I'm not sure what it's like in the Netherlands, but in the US saying you can't do on-call on Xmas b/c of religious observance is probably the one thing that would actually work.
Cute_Activity7527@reddit
In whole EU if its not in contract they can do fuck all. And if they force you to work by blackmail they can face serious issues in court.
Only US and other 3rd world countries have such retarded predatory anti-employee laws.
kotlin93@reddit
It's not a bug it's a feature
Cute_Activity7527@reddit
I alao like to starve to death when CEO has an episode.
Burgess237@reddit
3rd world country checking in: No, just the US has anti-employee laws.
klimaheizung@reddit
Then stop replying. Sorry, but sometimes it's annoying that people from USA assume the internet is all about them...
doctrgiggles@reddit
He was agreeing with you
klimaheizung@reddit
"but in the US...." is not really of interest here. It's noisy.
Imagine every nation would write such a reply. "but in China", "but in Australia", "but in ..."
Ill-Education-169@reddit
Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed
But in the US, we go back to sleep and wake up on the right side /s
qwertyslayer@reddit
Reddit is an American company, and the plurality of its users are American. Go complain on your local Reddit equivalent.
erik5@reddit
They were giving advice that from their experience, religious holidays has been a way become exempt. The fact that they are in the US is a caveat, because this user was unsure if it would apply in the EU.
While Americans can get a little ethnocentric, the user you were complaining about was just being agreeable, offering what advice they could, while maintaining caution since it is based on their experience in the US. Dont be mean.
Cute_Activity7527@reddit
This os best advice ypu can get here. If your employer still doesnt care and is willing to break the law. Sue them if they blackmail you. Have everything on paper just in case.
tinmanjk@reddit
need to open online consultancy for this. Pretty spot on :)
vekkarikello@reddit
Sweden My previous place paid 1/3 of base salary for on call every other week. My current doesn’t pay anything but if there is an alarm and I accept the alarm I will get 100euro for the first 30 minutes and if it takes longer there’s a different compensation.
Idk about the Netherlands but that would not be allowed in Sweden.
caphill2000@reddit
Don’t have any advice for you, hopefully the laws in your country are more favorable to workers than the US, where you’d have zero recourse.
Unpaid on call is the biggest scam and it blows my mind every tech company has gotten away with it.
Ambitious-Raccoon-68@reddit
Its not that bad. We have an on-call schedule. Im being paid about 250k total comp for fully remote.
I don't care if i need to have my laptop with me for one week every 5 weeks. Its not that big of a hassle. I just throw it in my car if I am going anywhere. If you are busy just swap with someone.
Generally you shouldn't be getting paged while on-call. It should be a very rare occasion. If you are then your team should stop all new development and spend time fixing your systems.
I probably get paged maybe once every 2-3 shifts and most of the time it is during business hours.
TL-PuLSe@reddit
Because generally it is paid - it's part of why your salary is what it is. Adding it after the salary has clearly not been negotiated to include oncall is the problem here.
ogig99@reddit
Not every - google compensates for oncall. It’s pretty lucrative
caphill2000@reddit
AFAIK they are the only one of big tech.
AngryTexasNative@reddit
I’m with another big tech company, but not FAANG (or current equivalent) big. We get oncall pay with holiday adders, but I think it’s primarily to keep policies similar between Europe and the US.
It’s nice to get a little more.
When I actually did work for a FAANG company I was pad so well I didn’t care.
DJKaotica@reddit
I was just thinking my FAANG-adjacent jobs have never offered on-call pay or anything, but you've reminded me that I have been on teams that offered a bonus if you were on-call during the Christmas week.
Also most teams I've been on if a week is particularly bad:
a) if you've been up most or all of the night, your backup takes over the next morning and you go get some rest
b) if you've spent a reasonable amount of time working outside of business hours you'd take a day off the following week to "recover" some of your personal time back (never really stated, but I'd say 4+ hours spent outside business hours then a full day off, and 2+ hours would be a half day)
AngryTexasNative@reddit
I’ve had that, but RTO kinda screws with that. If I had to be in 50% of the time I’d rather use the unlimited PTO and not have it count against me remote days.
FinestObligations@reddit
Maybe in the US. I’ve worked for many mid sized companies in EU and not a single one was uncompensated on-call.
Material_Policy6327@reddit
Yea I’ve never worked at any that compensated for on call. Surprised to hear google does that but glad to hear as well
Rymasq@reddit
I’ve had two jobs with on call and both of them compensated. the first basically was a choice between sticking more hours which pays out time and a half at our salaried rate. the second was just a flat payment for the on call rotation.
Material_Policy6327@reddit
Lucky. Every place I was at either do this or get fired
Jolly-joe@reddit
It makes more sense in the US as the total compensation is very high compared to other fields of similar education like analysts and accounting but definitely not for the EU.
Which-World-6533@reddit
Not sure about EU but being on-call without compensation would not work in the UK.
beetfarmer_dm@reddit
Unfortunately it does in the UK too. Though there is some protection with a mandatory 11 hour uninterrupted rest period.
Which-World-6533@reddit
It would only fly if people are complete doormats.
stingraycharles@reddit
Yeah, previous employer wanted to introduce it and said “but if you get paged we pay you double the usual rate”, but the whole problem is that you can’t go anywhere / do anything while being on call and not getting paid.
My current place pays 25% of base salary while on call, and I haven’t been paged a single time in the past year. That’s reasonable.
PasswordIsDongers@reddit
>can’t go anywhere / do anything while being on call
This setup requires to be paid exactly because this is essentially the same as being at work.
backfire10z@reddit
Is this by company policy? Why not?
SolFlorus@reddit
If you live near the mountains, cell service is abysmal. I can't go skiing, camping, hiking, in the mountains. I can't even go to certain areas in the metro area depending on where they are compared to the cell towers.
kotlin93@reddit
I mean that sounds like you a problem lol
ings0c@reddit
You can’t go anywhere without cell service - no hiking, no camping You can’t drink Concerts are out Etc
The downsides are massive depending on your lifestyle
Few-Impact3986@reddit
This depends on your sla. Let's say it 1-2 hours for a response. You can.
ings0c@reddit
You still can’t drink, unless you have some tips you’d like to share.
kotlin93@reddit
Try Starlink + router SIM hotspot as backup. You def can drink just don't get impaired lol. The startup I used to work at used to have shots in the office, nobody cared.
Dry_Row_7523@reddit
my company's on call policy literally has a bullet point "don't respond to pages if you are wasted". there's a reason it's phrased like that.
DJKaotica@reddit
Not one boss in my on-call experience has cared if you've have a beer or two.
Don't get wasted or drink so much that you're useless if a call comes in, or you've passed out and don't wake up with the call.
That being said I know some friends / cowokers who go fully dry during their on-call weeks.
For doing stuff: If I'm going to a friend's place I'll throw my laptop / headphones in a bag and bring it with me. My friends (most of us work FAANG/adjacent) understand what on-call means and that it might be a 5-30 minute thing and then you can go back to hanging out, or once things are stabilized and the right people have the right actions to do, you may need to head back home quickly so you can focus on the situation there.
If I'm going somewhere in town I'll throw my laptop in a bag in the trunk knowing I might have to tether to my phone for a bit or find a local coffee shop to get power/internet. Again, make sure the parties involved know you might have to bail.
If something important comes up (family emergency, etc.), that's why you have a backup right? Please tell me you do have a backup?
On that note if "smaller things" come up you can maybe use your backup but I wouldn't take advantage of it if you can avoid it. Some on-call groups allow you to swap days, or even just short periods of time, that would be the preferred solution.
Like actually as an example: my newish team (joined Sept 2nd) just set up our new on-call schedule Nov 3rd, and I got added and scheduled for the second week. I didn't think anything was coming up when we were discussing it, but completely forgot a friend had bought us tickets to go to a comedy show that Monday night. When I realized it that morning I quickly messaged my backup and was like "hey, I totally forgot I have a comedy show to go to tonight; can you keep your phone on in case a call comes in? I'll be out roughly 7pm to 10pm".
He was fine to take it, and our new on-call queue is quiet (knock on wood) so thankfully nothing came in.
So for important events / acts that are only in town the one night or a couple night, trade off that say 4-hour window with someone else on your team who is available. In turn be sure to pick up those windows if a coworker needs it, even if you're not their backup. You're on a team, you can all look out for each other that way.
Camping / remote location stuff is definitely out, but if you have kids you could "camp in the backyard" for fun.
Hiking? Maybe check out a city park you haven't explored before or even a neighbourhood with like a "Main Street" / small botique shops you've never walked around before and check it out? If it's a rather large area with sketchy reception maybe warn your backup like "Hey I'm gonna go walk around; it has reception in most areas but my phone might drop periodically; if I miss a call I'll find out as soon as I have reception and head back to my car to hop online and take over." My city has tons of parks I've never been to; sure it's not the wilderness or in the mountains but you're at least out in nature.
I remember back in the last city I lived in, a friend would start inviting people on "urban hikes" early in the spring, before all the snow had melted in the mountains, for everyone to get into shape for backpacking. She even recommended you bring a bag and slowly make it heavier and heavier with each urban hike to get used to the weight building up.
ings0c@reddit
Sure, I’m not saying no one should ever do on call.
I’m saying you should get paid for it, because it’s inconvenient.
Mediocre-Ebb9862@reddit
Or it’s just part of the deal considering overall pay
technonotice@reddit
Absolutely this. Ours brought in a 10 minute SLA, so good luck doing anything that can't be instantly interrupted to work.
The manager enjoyed diving into incidents even when not on call, so couldn't see the issue for the rest of us. Quite glad to have left that role.
thehumblestbean@reddit
Running an incident from a laptop isn't really feasible IME. Depending on how bad things are you'll likely have multiple monitoring systems open, multiple terminals open, incident comms to deal with, etc.
Not something I'd want to do on my laptop connected to some shitty hotspot wifi
ings0c@reddit
I use an ultra-wide external monitor normally, but I can get by absolutely fine with virtual desktops on OSX.
donjulioanejo@reddit
I manage to work perfectly fine doing this with a single laptop screen.
Never understood the need for 3 27" screens side by side.
We've had multi-tasking since like the early 90s.
notjim@reddit
It’s not ideal, but I’m not sacrificing my whole life like that during on call, and we’re not expected to at my company. As long as I have decent cell service or WiFi, I’m going about my business. I usually stick within 10-20 minutes of home, so that if I need to change locations after initial triage I can do so.
Drauren@reddit
It's not ideal but you'll do it, rather than being tethered to a desk for the entire time.
Chevaboogaloo@reddit
Doesn't really work the same when you have a family. Can't tell my wife and kids I'm heading out if we're at the pool.
donjulioanejo@reddit
Open up your laptop on the lounge chair.
notjim@reddit
I would take my laptop with me and then bust it out poolside if paged.
donjulioanejo@reddit
Why not? Live your normal life, bring your laptop with you. Set an expectation with friends that if you get a page, you have to deal with it.
Yes, there's some limitations (i.e. can't go on a 4 hour drive or backwoods hiking out of cell reception), but otherwise, unless your on-call is completely unreasonable due to the amount of pages, it's rarely a big problem.
And if your on-call is completely unreasonable, then it's time to fix your app or infrastructure.
denseplan@reddit
That's a lot of unpaid compromises you're willing to take.
fried_green_baloney@reddit
Friend was civil service with on-call rotation. I think he got $10/hour for all on-call hours, and time and a half for any time actively working a call. Also an emergency was something that absolutely had to be taken care of right then. If they could for instance use paper forms until start of business day and then catch up, it wasn't an emergency.
$10/hour => 168 hour week, 40 hours regular work week, 128 hours on-call, means extra $1280 for the week.
ShiitakeTheMushroom@reddit
If you build things right, you won't ever get called. I've done 24 hour, week-long on call rotations for years and have only been paged twice.
hardolaf@reddit
Even in the USA this would be considered a material change to working conditions and would be thusly constructive dismissal if you quit over it.
jimmithy@reddit
Just to start the conversation, doesn't your salary make it paid and on call is part of your job expectations for maintaining your own systems?
I'm in engineering for medium tech and while I've seen additional benefits for on call like paid dinners, time off after an incident, paid phone plan - I don't know many who offer paid.
caphill2000@reddit
If we take it to the extreme we’re saying all salaried employees can be expected by their employer to work 24x7x365 which is obviously ridiculous.
I’m extremely thankful to not have on call, practically every other team I work with does, and it’s extremely unfair to them that we are all paid the same.
jimmithy@reddit
Well, that's definitely the extreme and yes, because it's the extreme it's ridiculous. Maybe another way to put it would be that for a handful of weeks a year that they make themselves available to respond to emergency incidents to ensure the success of the business.
While you're not on those teams, if they pinged you after hours to support them, would you help?
caphill2000@reddit
No. I wouldn’t even know they had messaged me.
wutcnbrowndo4u@reddit
I've only been at bigtech and adjacent, but I've never had unpaid oncall
caphill2000@reddit
What big tech besides google does paid? I’m talking about the top 10 largest here.
wutcnbrowndo4u@reddit
Lol actually that's a great point, I was oncall at Google for a few years, at another co with business-hours oncall, then wasn't oncall at a third. In my head that added up to "I've been at bigtech for a decade and a half with no unpaid oncall", but I guess I just got lucky.
Maybe it's just a Google thing. TIL!
YareSekiro@reddit
For me I think in a way the "unpaid" on call are in reality factored in your pay if they mentioned forefront that you are gonna do on call in your interviews etc. But if they suddenly add this when it wasn't the case then yes it's absolutely worth pushing back or leaving for.
Spiritual-Mechanic-4@reddit
my employer makes it pretty clear during the recruiting process that oncall is an expectation of every engineer. Its not specifically compensated, but we're paid well enough that nobody is going to complain.
my previous company actually compensated oncall very well, enough that people would fight to get into a rotation so they could get the extra money.
Whitchorence@reddit
I think you might want to ask in /r/cscareerquestionsEU because in the US the answer would be that that's normal and there isn't much you can do about it
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
Yeah thank you, my mistake to drop this post in a US-centric sub (didnt know in advance).
Whitchorence@reddit
No big deal, I found the other answers interesting.
nicwortel@reddit
I live and work in the Netherlands. You have already received a lot of useful advice for how to deal with this situation, so I will try to avoid repeating that. Instead here are some links to useful resources which explain your legal rights in this situation.
First of all, your employer cannot force you to accept on-call duty if this has not been agreed upon in your contract, so legally you can simply refuse this new schedule:
Source: https://www.fnv.nl/werk-inkomen/werktijden/consignatiedienst?lang=en-US
We also have the "Arbeidstijdenwet" (Working Hours Act) which regulates how many hours you can work during a day/week/etc., as well as how many days you are allowed to be on-call:
Source: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/werktijden/vraag-en-antwoord/welke-regels-gelden-bij-oproepdiensten-consignatie (use Google Translate to translate it to English)
In my experience it is common for more 'professional' organizations to arrange on-call duty in the employment contract and offer compensation for it. If it is not offered as a specific compensation but is part of the job, it might be considered to be included in the salary. So if the employer wants to introduce the on-call duty after you have already agreed on your contract and salary, I would definitely negotiate an additional compensation for it. However, do note that it is not a legal requirement to receive a compensation for being on-call:
Source: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/werktijden/vraag-en-antwoord/welke-regels-gelden-bij-oproepdiensten-consignatie
However, once you receive a call to work, it counts as at least 30 minutes of working time (even if the actual work was only 5 minutes):
Source: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/werktijden/vraag-en-antwoord/welke-regels-gelden-bij-oproepdiensten-consignatie
More information about the Working Hours Act in English is available in this PDF brochure: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/werktijden/documenten/brochures/2010/05/10/de-arbeidstijdenwet-engels (page 8 covers on-call duty).
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
Hello Nic, thank you so much for your handy answer.
Side note: I think I was there during one of your talks in Amsterdam!
nicwortel@reddit
Haha what a small world! 😄
Feel free to send me a message if you want to discuss this situation in more detail.
wavelen@reddit
„Hello manager, yeah you know this unpaid on-call stuff that was not mentioned upfront? Yeah, I'm not doing it. I'm willing to talk about it if we define a fair set of rules/a contract including compensation. Have a nice weekend!“
kagato87@reddit
Check your local laws. In many regions this is straight up illegal.
Do you have labor protections? Does your employment agreement (the one you signed) include "and other assigned duties" or similar? You may be safe.
Standard non-industry-specific: Find another job. One short hop is fine, it's a pattern that will ruin you. You're leaving because it's really not a good fit. Don't slag them, and make them work to drag out of you the fact that they've pulled a bait and switch. (This protects you, plus an employer will generally not want to hire someone that slags their former employer, because they know one day they'll probably be that former employer.)
As for the calls themselves. Fail to acknowledge you're on-call. If your phone rings, and it's convenient, sure answer it, but you're surprised and annoyed. If you don't feel like answering it, "Oh, sorry, didn't hear it ring" or "battery died" and so on. You'd be surprised how long you can get away with neglecting on-call (if it's truly on-call, and not 3rd shift).
And seriously, on-call? As a DEVELOPER? wtaf? High risk updates that might need a dev to push an emergency code fix can be planned out properly. Customers with broken stuff should never be reaching out to dev. Do they have you doing support too or something? My company has on-call for support, on-call for servers, and that's it. We're a SaaS shop, and if something major comes up that actually needs a developer, well, they know when high risk updates are rolling out and tend to stay available, because they know they won't be called, maybe DMd on Teams as a last ditch attempt before pulling the plug and rolling back. I think that happened once this calendar year.
pokeybill@reddit
On-call has been explicitly stated in the description of every engineering job I've ever held and I'm a firm believer in "you built it, you support it" where feasible.
Even in a follow-the-sun model there will be incidents where the offshore support cannot solve the problem and need to page out engineers.
My stance is, you make yourself whole if paged by offsetting your normal working hours that pay period (we are all salaried & ot exempt). Explain to your manager how valuable this time is to you, even if they don't value your time.
Depending on the laws in your area you might be able to take some recourse but the first step is a frank discussion about job descriptions and compensation.
OfficeSpankingSlave@reddit
I am based in another EU country and was in a situation where the employer was considering adding on call to the devs in addition to the SREs. Compensation for it was always mentioned as it was never in our contract. Of course we helped sometimes even when we weren't on call but those were rare instances. It's different when its expected and needing to be in a state of readiness.
I think you should definitely broach the subject. Maybe not from a compensation standpoint but more of a "this is more than what I signed up for". You need to try to cater it diplomatically for your audience.
dweezil22@reddit
OP neglected to mention where their employer is based. I'm wondering if this is a US based company that doesn't realize they're probably breaking laws.
mingusrude@reddit
It says clearly that it's in the Netherlands.
dweezil22@reddit
Which-World-6533@reddit
If OP is residing in the Netherlands and is an actual employee (rather than a contractor) then they will be covered by Netherlands labour laws.
dweezil22@reddit
Good point about the contractor part.
I think a lot of people assume that international companies are magically omniscient and infallible, but they actually make mistakes and omissions all the time, it's always a good idea to verify stuff like this.
tiagocesar@reddit
I'm also in the Netherlands; every single company I worked for (that had OnCall) made me sign an annex to the contract. I was compensated for the on call time and would make more if I got actually paged and needed to work.
Your company is breaching the law. My advice: don't do the on-call and then start looking for a new job.
elbotacongatos@reddit
Was about to right something similar. 2 of the companies I've worked with in Ireland that had on call, I had to sign an annex contract. Obviously it was asked and agreed before, not mandatory, not for everyone, and only those that agreed signed the annex. Also a phone was offered.
In both cases it was very well paid, even when there were no alerts. In both cases if we worked too many hours, we could take the next day off.
bluemage-loves-tacos@reddit
This is the way. I don't do on-call at the moment. If my employer offered it as a paid add-on, I'd certainly pick up some days. Previous employers have just assumed on-call with no pay was OK, so when I started getting pinged, my phone mysteriously got silenced. 99/100 it was a false positive anyway, so there was little risk and I would just tell them I had been asleep and did not wake up to the pings (which was true, quite a bit of the time).
dnult@reddit
I was on-call for nearly 30 years. Yes it sucked at times, but over all it wasn't bad. I was happy to support my teams when things went sideways. I would say that experience led to a lot of innovations that improved quality and decreased the number of outages we experienced too. When holidays came along, someone got the short straw, but we supported each other by trading time slots and having backup so we could all be with our families. It helps if you have 4 or more people in the rotation.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
OK cool. But I I think your on-call was a paid duty, right?
dnult@reddit
I was a salary employee. If an on-call event occurred we were often given a day off or other reward.
Unsounded@reddit
In the US this setup is extremely common. It’s fairly normal for salaried positions to have oncall and it’s standard across most of the tech industry. My only advice is to start asking about this during the interview stage because you might be fighting an uphill battle.
This could vary wildly by country/region, is your company solely based in the EU/Netherlands?
Sheldor5@reddit
in the EU if it's not part of the contract but the employer tries this shit they can face serious legal consequences
jaktonik@reddit
Every time I learn something about the EU I get more jealous, I'm in the states and comp-less on-call is just defacto responsibility for every tech job I've since I got my CS degree. I've been on teams with an unwritten understanding of time-comping support hours (i.e. you put in 4 hours fixing something in the middle of the night, you are expected to get that 4 hours back with a short day later that week) but that's fallen out of practice afaik
Sheldor5@reddit
do you also want my 53% income taxes?
shifu_shifu@reddit
In which EU country are you paying 53% income tax without literally making millions?
xmBQWugdxjaA@reddit
Sweden is like this - the top rate is 56% (depending on region) over like $40k or so, so you can get close to that pretty quickly.
SableSnail@reddit
According to PwC it looks like 52% tax on $66k and above which is insane.
It says they've averaged out the municipal rates too so i can see how it could be even higher in some regions,
And the capital gains tax is a flat rate at 30% as well?!
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
A detail proponents of nordic socialism prefer to not talk about much :D Some states such as Norway and the Netherlands tax unrealized capital gains, too. And the untaxed cap is like 50k :D
France is the worse one in this regard i believe, their employer contribitions are insane and the quality of government provided services is far lower than in the nordics.
That said, i still prefer that model to the US one. Because seemingly either you become a tax haven, tax your middle class to death or have an exploited underclass. I lived in in the country with the latter and don't want to go back, even for lower taxes
xmBQWugdxjaA@reddit
The issue is the taxes are getting worse and worse as the governments are literally insolvent with the pensions and benefits situation.
The USA is way better for this (and can also afford to be more lax on immigration) - since you don't have massive entitlements.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
I don't think any of it is the innate fault of the system. You have various states of fiscal disater across Europe, so it means that you can do a much better job, Europe can be full of the Netherlands, not full of Frances.
Besides, it's like saying "yeah look those non-slavery countries are less prosperous". They very well might be, i just don't want to live in such a system.
But we're pretty much fucked it seems like, i'm not very optimistic for both Europe and America.
Sheldor5@reddit
in the one with the highest taxes ...
shifu_shifu@reddit
I am from Germany, one of the highest tax rate countries. Depending on how you count employer contributions and health insurance my average tax rate at 120k€ p.a. is about 57%. However without Health insurance, since it is not a tax and I can opt in to the private system to pay significantly less, it is around 40%.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
Germany is far from the highest tax rates (at least based on the number you've given) countries.
the Netherlands has about 40% tax on gross wages if we take your 120k figure + 15% employer contributions and we still pay for private healthcare insurance for about 150 euros per person per month with a maximum deductible (i think that's what's is called? Eigen risico in dutch.
I'm pretty sure all of the Nordics and France has it worse. Taxes in Belgium and Iberia are also insane for what you get from them.
crimsonwall75@reddit
Even in Greece the effective tax rate (including employer contributions which are calculated in the budget for a position) reaches 50% for around 70k gross (true cost to company is 85k, net is 42k). Plus almost every company pays for private insurance because the public one is dogshit. And bonuses are also taxed with more than 50%.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
Effective tax rate is very difficult to calculate, given that they are mandatory employer contributions that are invisible to you as an employee, but most highly paid professionals in the EU will pay very close amount in taxes.
Some EU countries also have their own obamacare-like system where you pay for your own mandatory healthcare insurance, so it's not like we get everything handed to us on a plate as compared to the US, too.
There has been a chart floating in reddit that tried to estimate that, in France it was closer to like 70% for a salary of 100k euros per year.
deathhead_68@reddit
The UK doesn't do this either, unless he's talking about the £100k tax trap, but there are numerous ways around it
NotRote@reddit
Yes? I make plenty and would rather poor people not starve/die/not have healthcare than having another 10-20%
jaktonik@reddit
Given that's literally cheaper than paying for health insurance on top of 40% income taxes divided among the fed state and failed state programs, absofreakinlutely.
Icy_Cartographer5466@reddit
Even in the most tax-disadvantageous situation you can contrive (single, living in San Francisco proper, not contributing anything to tax advantaged retirement accounts), a 40% effective tax rate still means you’re taking home about $240,000 a year after taxes on a $400,000 a year income. And your employer is likely covering most or all of your insurance premiums. You could rent a place for $5,000 a month and you’d still have more money left over than the pre-tax salary of an engineer doing the same kind of work in Europe.
jaktonik@reddit
It sounds like a beautiful thing to assume 400k is an achievable salary for most engineers, most of us have never seen 200.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
Except then you would be making 35k in Germany administering microsoft access databases, because not many people get lucrative jobs in EU either.
Sorry, but for highly paid professionals the US is simply more advantageous, no amount of COL makes the earning potential the US employees have worse.
Literally the only argument you can have is that maybe the shitty health instance practices might fuck you over if you get something very serious like cancer, but it's not like EU's system is heaven on earth, there are obsolutely higher wait times and the amount of available treatment options is lower.
In the Netherlands for example private healthcare is not allowed (beyond simple procedures), so you don't have many options.
It's not all roses and peaches over here either
Whitchorence@reddit
I was surprised at first to hear colleagues who were from Europe say they preferred the American system but it made sense -- they had money and could be seen when they wanted, while in the European case money wasn't the problem but you were in the same line with everyone else.
And yes US professional workers are in total denial about how rich they are. Boomers may have been a bit delusional about how great everything is here but we've overcorrected in the opposite direction at this point.
Icy_Cartographer5466@reddit
That is the income you’d have to make to end up with the 40% tax rate you mentioned 🤷
jaktonik@reddit
24-32% federal, 7.6% FICA, 6% state (often higher). Roughly 40%.
Icy_Cartographer5466@reddit
Taking the mean over estimates the tax burden because the brackets are progressive. An engineer making, say, $240,000 a year only pays the 32% marginal rate on $40,000 of that income.
deathhead_68@reddit
When I read your original comment, my first response was 'yeah well that's the price of your insane US salaries', but upon reading your replies it does seem like a worse deal.
I feel like in the US I could quite literally earn double what I get now, and I do like to visit (maybe not so much right now), but I'm already relatively well off with what I make and get some pretty strong labour protection laws to boot.
dantheman91@reddit
Where are you paying 40% and paying a meaningful amount of your salary on healthcare? Typically if you're making about 7 figures you have a good employer healthcare that costs maybe a few hundred a month
jaktonik@reddit
I'm including all taxes since EU has a simpler model - going off of 22-32% federal covering a span of engineer salaries, 7.6% FICA, 6% state (often higher). Ranging 35 to 46% so I took the mean.
Sheldor5@reddit
in my country you also need private insurance if you don't want to wait 6 months for your cancer treatment ...
jaktonik@reddit
Sorry to hear you had to learn that, but, all you're doing is convincing me to expat lol. I called around for a simple colonoscopy about a year ago, it was booked 4 months out indifferent of my insurance provider. Got lucky that it was just a food intolerance to common ingredients that I was able to figure out myself, but yeah, not much different out here. Plus insurance here has benefit caps, I'm not sure if that's the case out there but there's often a "maximum provided benefit" amount for insurance plans - especially in dental, usually capping around $2000, despite a root canal + crown averaging $3000 and invisalign hitting around $6000
Teh_Original@reddit
It's not like there's no wait time in the US. I've had to wait more than a year for an appointment.
SarriPleaseHurry@reddit
Hahahahahahaha
NotRote@reddit
Trade off is we make way way more. I’m a mid level and I probably make more than staff engineer in Western Europe.
Whitchorence@reddit
If you're willing to take a significant pay cut it is not a dream to go work there.
SableSnail@reddit
If you compare your salary to the European ones, arguably you are already being compensated for those differences.
xmBQWugdxjaA@reddit
Until you less than half of the salary, and double the taxes.
Willbo@reddit
Maybe common for Amazon and other Kafkaesque companies. Most US companies (especially Christian-owned) will give you some leeway depending on the frequency of alerts and the required responsibilities during on-call. We're human, after all.
24-hour availability, always next to your laptop, last minute scheduling, no time off in lieu or compensation is pretty constricting. If you're also required a short response time and have a high frequency of alerts, that's as good as working in some states.
FinestObligations@reddit
What’s common in the US is completely irrelevant.
LingonberryLiving325@reddit
Having on call is relatively normal and allowed in the Netherlands, but it needs to be specified in your employment contract (directly or indirectly through company regulations). They cannot unilaterally introduce on-call without altering contractual terms, and the employee is under no obligation to accept those terms.
Which-World-6533@reddit
That's because the US has awful labour laws.
In most of EU and UK this would not fly and would not be legal.
throwaway1736484@reddit
True, they should tell you in the interview process in the US imo. The comp at many companies is high enough that we accept it as part of the job. Not everywhere pays so well and expectations should be clear.
ForeverYonge@reddit
Yes, needs to be explicitly discussed when interviewing. But also good roles can pay multiples of EU salary so it kind of comes with the territory that expectations are higher.
I’d be pissed if I was paid EU salaries but expected to put in US levels of effort / oncall.
Plane-Cake8@reddit
NAL - id reach out in a legal sub. Push back, say you cant do christmas day.
24/7 oncall can be classed as worked hours which takes you well beyond contracted so you should be compensated. Most oncall is compensated in pre agreed terms, and opt-in unless its in your contract.
You can't get a christmas with your family back. Your family will remember you getting paged at Christmas for no good reason.
wickerman07@reddit
I have been working in the Netherlands for many years at different companies, and this situation has happened to me twice.
The first time was at a Dutch company. They introduced on-call, but it was optional and they were paying for it. I decided the pay wasn't worth the trouble. The company was paying peanuts anyway.
The second time was at a successful American startup with an Amsterdam office. There was no mention of on-call during the interviews, but after a few months, they introduced it for our team. It was pretty rough and stressful. I was lucky that it wasn't 24 hours because we were sharing on-call with the US office, so basically I was on-call from 10am to 10pm, Wednesday to Wednesday, once per month. And yes, I had to be on call during Christmas.
There were some discussions about whether we should be compensated extra, but the message from management was that this is not your typical Dutch company, and they were sort of right. The pay was significantly higher, and so were the working hours (it wasn't a 9-to-5 job anyway). Essentially, their answer was that you're already very well compensated for whatever shit comes your way. There was a clause in the contract that "the employer can ask you to work overtime, outside of working hours, etc."
I don't know if anyone tried to challenge that or if that clause would hold up in court in the Netherlands, but the truth is that if someone wants to make a career at such a company, you have to accept what it involves. In your case, try to see if the job is worth it. If not, look for something else, because I don't see how you can build a career at such a company if you don't want to do on-call.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
> "the employer can ask you to work overtime, outside of working hours, etc."
Every contract I signed was like that. But... we need some boundaries, otherwise, why should they hire a cleaning company? Hey, if "The pay is significantly higher", you can clean the toilet in between a code review and a sprint review!!! /s
wickerman07@reddit
Yeah, let’s not get ridiculous here, lol. The thing is that for most American companies on-call is part of the whole package. It is of course better if they discuss it with you earlier in the interview process, but things may change anyway. Having said that, of course, you can try and see how if you can somehow get a more favorable deal on your on call. Good luck!
Goodie__@reddit
If your in America: Good luck. They are relying on the jobs market being so shit you'll just take it.
If you are any where else in the world: IANAL but that's probably illegal as fuck.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
It's literally in the first line of my post: Netherlands (EU). I didnt know this sub is mostly US-centric.
gg1bbs-phone@reddit
I'm in Australia so take this as you want. There's a book Never Split the Difference which is my guide for this kind of situation. In short I think coming to you management with compromises when they're already acting in bad faith is going to end in a bad outcome, you're already negotiating yourself down before you've even had the conversation. Rather i think your best bet is to talk to them, ask them for as many details about the requirements as you can and then then ask in an earnest way 'how can I do that?'.
As a side, and different then your situation, I was the reason the on-call roster was cancelled in my last team. The team had a semi formal weekend on call which wasn't in our contract or mentioned when I joined the team. When I started getting pressure to join the on-call roster I met with my manager to insist that the on call requirements and compensation was put into writing for my own liability, 'how can I be part of an on-call if I don't know exactly what the expectations are?'. Had they put it in writing and I wasn't happy with the terms, I would have gone to my countries workers rights authority. In the end the manager never bothered or wasn't able yo to get it in writing and about 6 months later the on-call requirements were unceremoniously dropped for the team.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
> Never Split the Difference
Oh man, I recently started reading it!
wobblydramallama@reddit
this is illegal in NL, working overtime must be paid and a clear amount has to be specified in the contract.
Maybe for a couple of hours of overtime nobody cares but for 24 hours on call during public holidays? lmao my dude
Some companies say in their contracts that if overtime is needed you forfeit the compensation or something like that but that clause is illegal so they can't really enforce it.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
> lmao my dude
This is the same thing I replied to my manager, but hey, in a professional way! :)
HK-65@reddit
The NL has strong labour laws in general, but it is a bit shit on on-call, as the laws pretend nobody does overtime in the NL, maybe it has never been updated.
By default, on-call time is not working time, but there are limits. Actual time worked on-call is working time that you have to be compensated for, unless your contract is like every single contract I had in the NL and has language that says your salary includes "occasional overtime".
Here is the brochure BTW:
https://www.arboportaal.nl/documenten/2010/05/10/arbeidstijdenwet-english-version
Basically your roster must comply with this:
Exception: he may work an average of 45 hours per week during this 16-week period under the following conditions:
In practice, most non-consultant companies I've worked with had some sort of on-call schedule. If it gets bad, start polishing your resume. If you want to, complain to your boss, you luckily can't be fired for being a pain in the ass.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
Thank you for your time and the links.
bwainfweeze@reddit
He did they end up putting the new guy on call after less than two months? What do they think you’re going to do except immediately call for backup?
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
Exactly. This is why I have very low esteem for "manager" in general.
domipal@reddit
in sweden, and it was the same policy for our dutch colleagues:
usually ended up being an extra 5-600 euro each time we’re oncall + friday off so i didn’t mind it.
Conscious_Support176@reddit
Doing on call isn’t the problem. Unpaid on call is. It means the company is incentivised to push bad quality code into production because they don’t have to pay you for time spent on call but they do need to pay you for the time takes to produce good quality.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
> Doing on call isn’t the problem. Unpaid on call is.
Exactly, this was my initial point.
Mediocre-Ebb9862@reddit
Arguing about oncall as something that has to be paid is myopic, the only thing that matters it TC.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
I'm paraphrasing your comment now:
Who cares about hours, boundaries, or fairness? If your compensation is high enough, just suck it up.
I think you're from the US. In the Netherlands, the idea that “boundaries don’t matter, only money does” is simply nonsense. Just an example: most of the managers I had worked 32 hours per week.
Apprehensive_Pea_725@reddit
You start pushing back every new feature unless is absolutely clear and well defined, development time goes up writing solid tests suites, and test for the worst to happen, test suite is very extensive and you handle every error as much as possible in the border of the app, pointing the error to user interaction/api caller and not internal behaviour.
superdurszlak@reddit
This depends on the country, but if you're hired in Netherlands, Dutch labor law applies so you'd best check with your local regulations.
In Poland, it's considered a "fundamental employees duty" to perform on-call so it doesn't have to be in the contract, but: - there are time limits (11h of uninterrupted daily rest and 35h of uninterrupted weekly rest) - 24h and 24/7 shifts are illegal. - you are not entitled to compensation or time off unless it's at employers premises or something (i.e. you perform on-call from home). But if something happens and you're called in, you're entitled to time off or compensation. On weekends you get a day off if I'm not mistaken. - in practice, companies often do pay a fixed rate per shift, especially in IT and especially if they want you to turn a blind eye on regulations and perform 24h or 24/7.
In USA, I don't think they have any specific rights in this regard. I don't know the specifics, but the labor laws are much more lax and my colleagues from USA typically had 24/7 shifts and plenty of overtime, all of which was unpaid.
Now, there's a caveat when you work for a US-based company in Europe. You need to be really cautious with American employers as they often behave as if US laws and customs applied in Europe too and all over the world. I've heard stories about one of the directors I worked under go mad over Polish on-call regulations and yelling something about communism.
graph-crawler@reddit
Firefighter got paid being on call
datOEsigmagrindlife@reddit
At the very least you need to push back and demand some compensation for this.
Last time I did on-call was a whole ago, but we got paid 4 hours per day even if no calls came in, and then double time for every hour a call came in.
I felt that was a fair situation and it made a noticeable difference in my salary for very few calls over the year.
Depending on how favorable the law in Holland is, I'd just say no.
I suspect being a European country you probably have better rights as an employee to push back on issues like this.
sudojonz@reddit
Also a dev in NL.
Short answer: call an employment lawyer, don't ask Reddit.
Longer answer: generally speaking they cannot just drop an on-call arrangement on you without compensation and mandate that you abide by it. Honestly I'm surprised two different Dutch companies would bait and switch you like this, sounds like multinational corp behavior. But again, call a lawyer yesterday.
termd@reddit
Most of us aren't in the EU and are only familiar with the US where we just get screwed. You need a lawyer for your country
MrMichaelJames@reddit
What does your country labor laws say about this. That is where you should be focusing your time. In the US we are screwed but I know other countries have laws around it.
CuriousConnect@reddit
If I was you, I would ignore it. You can also be asked to fart on command and paint walls with celery sticks as brushes, but if you’re not contractually obligated then why would you?
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
Can you ask if anyone will swap Christmas with you. I’m also in the us so I don’t know how it works in the eu that’s what we would do here.
flowering_sun_star@reddit
They tried to get us to do an on call rota, but never pushed very hard. In the end they found enough volunteers willing to do a weekend on-call for eight hours pay plus double time if called up. But they had to offer us that, and I never got any push-back for turning it down. I have been explicitly asked to do it a couple of times, and my 'no, I need the down time from work' was accepted without question.
I'm also very open with junior team members that I don't want to add my details to the alerting system, and that I think they shouldn't feel the need either. Again, I've had no pushback from management.
I'm in the UK, so presumably broadly similar laws even after Brexit. Then again UK law allows employees with less than 2 years service to be fired for any reason (except for being in a protected category, which hardly anyone is stupid enough to admit). This mostly shook out in a rather different job market though, so that may make a difference.
qrzychu69@reddit
Well, in Poland being on-call technically is working, and you are not allowed to do 24h of work
There are ways around it, but it requires the employee to sign a piece of paper that you are volunteering your time
Btw, I left a company with unlimited paid vacation, because we have week long 24/7 on-calls pretty much once per month. Compensation for this was like 8% more per month - not worth it at all.
I don't know your exact position, but I ask during interview about this specifically and say our loud that I left a job with on-call duty.
Of at current job somebody asked me to do it, I would say just no, that wasn't the deal. Send me an official email you want to do 24h of work.
I'm not doing that, fire me if you want, but I never signed anything like that. If you force me, I'm reporting this as not adhering to the work code.
Check your local laws, Netherlands should be similar with worker rights. Check if being ready to work is a separate status, of not, it's working. That means you are entitled to breaks, and can't do more than x amount of hours per day.
For me the worst part about the on call was that 99% of calls could have been an email, and the answer always was "yes, it can wait until Monday". Then why TF did you call me on the middle of the night?!
Employer was based in the USA, so were most clients, so they would usually call around 11pm of my time
polish_nick@reddit
> Well, in Poland being on-call technically is working, and you are not allowed to do 24h of work
Also from Poland, HR in my company claims just being on-call doesn't count as working as long as you're not getting calls. Only when we actually get paged, it does count as work plus we get a day off if this happens during weekend.
t3c1337redd@reddit
I would ask HR to tell me this in writing. If it’s not work I don’t have to do anything work related. I don’t have to have my computer with me, be sober, I don’t have to care about work. If they would call me I would be honest if I am able to take care of the issue right away (bc I am at home) or not, and when I could take care of it.
Of course they will be angry but that’s when I would pick that writing - either you want me to do something work related (be close to the computer regardless if it’s witin my convenience at any given day) - and thus pay me, or it’s not work time at all and I am free to live my life as I fit outside of work. Those are mutually exclusive demands, pick one.
qrzychu69@reddit
We had plenty of discussion around that
technically on-call duty is called "dyżur" in Polish law, and you are supposed to get free time equal to your on call time, and you still are required to take breaks, because you are technically at work. The free time I think doesn't apply if you can be at home, but breaks do.
Getting drunk is illegal when you are on on-call duty, you can't go to the cinema, even gym or 5k run is pushing it, because you have to be ready to start working at any time.
Still, unless I'm paid a shit ton of money for it and it's rare, I am not doing on-calls. And 7 days in a row definitely are a no from me
Puzzleheaded_Cell694@reddit
Are you sure you are not confusing it with doing dyżurin office which is basically working. On call (dyżur telefoniczny) that is performed from home is unpaid according to labour law. You only get paid when you get called, but employer must make sure that your 11h daily and 38h weekly rest time is met. This mean you would often work less or not at all next day after being calls. You also should remember your rights, like they need to provide all needed equipment including a phone.
qrzychu69@reddit
Mine was paid, but I didn't get breaks for a week
ReaLifeLeaking@reddit
All I can say is that it should be illegal. Don't you have a union representative to discuss with?
TopSwagCode@reddit
Talk to yohr union. Pretty sure you have similar rules to Denmark where this is not allowed. Pretty sure that entire EU has made major rules about time tracking and being on call.
Places Ive worked with on call, you would get fixed rate entire time you were on call. And if you were actually called in there would be added larfe amount while active in that period.
https://chatgpt.com/share/69276e73-d6d8-800b-9a8a-a665fea5b343
CW-Eight@reddit
In the UK, I was paid for overtime. In the US, hah! Probably legally required in the EU.
Frenzeski@reddit
Unionise
SelfDiscovery1@reddit
1: No, not at all. It is abusive of an employer to add extra hours to your schedule without fairly compensating you in some way that is fair to both parties. Understand this may not be well received but is necessary to maintain boundaries
2: My understanding is yes EU employment law should help prevent this sort of thing, it should be in the work contract. But talk to a local employment attorney
Aside concern for your management: Why on earth do you need this out of your devs? Are you not prioritizing quality? Are you releasing untested garbage to prod? This situation is a symptom of mgmt failure.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
It's a bit silly saying that mandating on-call means that you release gargabe. Everything breaks and there are countless 3rd party integrations beyond your (reasonable) control.
Sometimes it's non-debatable depending on the domain (think medical) or the leadership wants to minimize any issues or downtime to preserve their reputation.
On-call is completely fine and healthy, as long as it's either voluntary or people volontairly sign contract where it's mentioned.
SelfDiscovery1@reddit
I agree with the last paragraph, if you add this:
... Given appropriate consideration
That was not the case for OP.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
> Are you releasing untested garbage to prod? This situation is a symptom of mgmt failure.
Absolutely. The point is that it’s very common here for companies to start by outsourcing all the development work, especially in the early stages. They often have the money and the ideas, but not the skills (and they want to save money at any cost). I personally worked for a company for a short period where the main application (in the finance sector) was built in India... don't get me wrong, the issue is not India, but...
The application was a Joomla project, and to add a new page we literally had to manually insert the ID of the new page into an array in a config file. And this wasn’t in 2001, it was in 2019. This is the kind of bullshit that still happens in our field.
morswinb@reddit
be sober XD
Man I just managed to sit down after a busy day and even though I am unemployed and just purred in a drink I feel too exhausted to do anything.
Even my old low tier software company offered some extra pay to be sober during the weekend. Reasonable thing to request from someone in their mid 20s, skip the party and have no fun but earn some extra cash.
This is straight bs what they are forcing on you.
bryrb@reddit
Fairly sure it is illegal to have such an on-call setup in the Netherlands. They have to pay you for your time and there are limits on the hours you work and how much rest you must have in-between working.
CheeseburgerLover911@reddit
from a legal perspective, i can't speak to it because i know nothing about the netherlands. having said that, on-call is part of every tech company that's worth their weight in the US.
I'd seek to clarify expectations for being on-call. i get the availability aspect, but
having said that, even if you're on-call for Xmas, it's not like people will be working..
mocheerina@reddit
Can you suggest an alternate schedule? Our company is doing 1 holiday per dev. We swap days when we are on vacation. Managers should distribute the load instead of making one person bear it.
As far as on-call in general, from my understanding if I write code I should also be responsible for it and own it in production. I shouldn't pass the responsibility over to others who didn't write any code. There are other careers where I don't have to write code, but I chose this one for the pay and flexibility. I could also work for a company that doesn't have any sort of uptime requirements, for example. So being on-call is not a surprise to me.
It is up to your manager to put up processes in place to make on-call as painless as possible, as far as compensation and good tooling, quality standards. Pages should be rare.
Pitiful_Objective682@reddit
Employment law in the Netherlands is likely a lot stricter. Here in the US it’s extremely common for job responsibilities to change without notice, almost all jobs are “at will” and you can be let go at any moment.
Anyways employment law aside it’s extremely common for a software team to need someone to be on call if something breaks. Imo the same team that builds it being responsible to fix and respond to incidents makes perfect sense. They’re most capable and most motivated to make it better. I’ve pretty much always had on call shifts and didn’t have extra compensation for it. Im paid a salary after all and get paid the same if I work 30 hours or 40. I often tell employees to offset off hours time responding to incidents with their daily schedule so come in late leave early is totally fine if you respond to an incident after hours.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
Wait, at will employment is one thing, but i assume labour contracts exists in the US? If you're being asked to do something that was not required of you before, surely you at least need to amend it and there might be clauses there that say it can't be amended unilaterily and/or minimum notice period should exist?
I suppose you can circumvent all of that by saying "if you don't show up you're fired" but the US is also surely not a complete free-for-all and some convention and curtesusies exist, especially for highly paid work such as programming? I imagine that labour relationship is different between a guy cleaning dishes in the bar and a guy who earns 200k per year
Stealth528@reddit
Most jobs in the US do not have a contract like this. There’s a job description, but employers are free to tell you to do whatever they want regardless of the job description and if you don’t like it, then get fucked. This is why things Iike return to office mandates are so pervasive in the US, employees have basically no rights because corps have endless money to lobby the government to stack the deck in their favor. Basically the only right you have as an employee is to quit
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
Really? What about stuff like Salary? IP rights? NDAs? Non-competes/poaching clauses? In the EU it's a part of the labour agreement you sign when you get hired.
Do you really just get your laptop and start working in a large IT company with high wages?
I can totally believe your description if you hire a busboy, but i find it hard to believe there are zero labour contractual obligation between an employer and employees for someone who earns 200k per year
Stealth528@reddit
Yes, any employee that is “at will” which is the majority of the US can have their salary reduced. It rarely happens because that’s a quick way to obliterate morale, but legally speaking there is nothing stopping employers from doing it. I don’t know much about IP rights, but from my understanding anything you make on company time is company property. There are non-competes, because that’s something that benefits the company not the employees.
https://www.wenzelfenton.com/blog/2023/12/18/can-employer-legally-reduce-pay/
Pitiful_Objective682@reddit
Salary reduction is generally constructive termination anyway.
Stealth528@reddit
True, I guess you can probably quit and get unemployment which is better than nothing
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
You would think that the land of the capitalism would treat contract law more seriously :D Nuts.
Stealth528@reddit
Unfortunately all of the mainstream media is owned/run by large corporations and they’ve spent years perfecting propaganda and have brainwashed 50+% of the country into believing any sort of laws that benefit employees at the expense of corporations is socialism and stifling innovation. It’s only getting worse, not better.
RandyHoward@reddit
Ha, no it doesn't work like that in the US. Your employer can pretty much change your responsibilities whenever they want and you have no recourse. If you were a dev today they could tell you to clean the office tomorrow. And they could fire you if you refuse, and being fired for cause means you're not eligible to collect unemployment benefits. American workers have very few rights, labor laws need major reform in America.
Quick-Benjamin@reddit
I know you guys get paid a lot more than us in the EU, but that sounds really horrible.
Not necessarily the on call as such. More the fact that an employer can just change your terms of employment like that.
I'd find that very destabilising.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
I mean to be fair, if the company wants to treat their employees like absolutely shit, they will do it regardless. Yes there are a bit of hoops to jump through in the EU, but as you've seen in covid and after EU companies are still doing mass layoffs, it's not like we've been completely unaffected.
The only true protection we get is things such as minimum mandated severance. But also, it's not like large us tech companies paid zero severance, so for high earners i'd say it's probably very close. If anything the difference is cultural, i think people behind companies just do not want to be such massive pricks and there is some societal shame still in the air that pushes against it.
Being a low paid employee must be an absolute hell in the US though
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
A contract is supposed to define the boundaries of what I’m hired and paid for. If the employer wants to add new responsibilities, especially 24/7 availability during holidays, then it needs to be discussed, agreed to, and compensated. And yes, incidents happen, but “the team fixes what the team built” does not automatically justify mandatory, uncompensated on-call rotations.
Goodos@reddit
It's basically the opposite in the EU. Job description is part of the contract and you can't modify that substantially without both parties agreeing. A lot of companies add "and possible additional duties" etc to the description but the courts have been very strict with how far from the actual description can those additional duties be. Idea is that we agree on what amount of work the employee will do for what amount of compensation.
serial_crusher@reddit
I don’t think an on-call rotation is unreasonable, and people should generally go into jobs expecting them.
Introducing a big process change like this last minute and wrecking people’s holidays is unreasonable though. I’d suggest keeping the conversation focused on that. There’s a legitimate business case for somebody to be on call, so the business needs to figure out together how to make that happen effectively.
One of the big variables to know about here, is how much work is actually involved in being on-call? That’s going to vary team-by-team. My observation has been that teams who have contracts and specific on-call shifts, tend to be more ok with products that fail in the middle of the night (since generally the guy creating the bugs isn’t the one dealing with them, and the guy who deals with them gets job security); whereas teams who have 24/7 on-call rotations are more tightly incentivized to build stable products that don’t need attention in the middle of the night. But, transitioning TO a 24/7 oncall rotation is going to suck in the short term because that incentive hasn’t had time to take effect yet. So yeah, changing things up right before holidays is a bad idea.
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
> My observation has been that teams who have contracts and specific on-call shifts, tend to be more ok with products that fail in the middle of the night (since generally the guy creating the bugs isn’t the one dealing with them, and the guy who deals with them gets job security);
I haven't experienced mandatory on-call and i haven't worked in large-large companies so i can't really compare directly, but that has not been my experience.
The pressure to let shit stay broken is from the feature pressure and/or the fact that your performance is not evuluated on the amount of shit that broke during the night. And not from any kind of "shit i might be woken up" incentive. Well at least i think it's the largest contributor at least, for sure shipping something that you're not running is not optimal.
And also,in the EU from my experience at least either the volonteer shifts are taken by like 50%-100% of the team members or even 100% if it's mandated in the labour agreement you sign when you get hired.
Simply putting that in the contracts so that people are aware what they are signing for is just superior to the "well you should have expected it" system i think
serial_crusher@reddit
yeah, knowing what you're getting into is always best.
But yeah, I see what you mean about it mattering whether or not the company gives a shit about their employees. For companies that care, it's reasonable to say "I got stuck fighting this production issue last night, so I'm taking today off. That feature is going to be late as a result", and then the company can figure out that it's a good idea to reduce the amount of times this happens.
But yeah, shitty companies will just tell you to do more work and throw stuff out faster. Not sure it matters what kind of on-call rotation you have at a company like that. It's going to suck working at that place either way.
farox@reddit
First of all, tell your boss that you already have those days scheduled.
After leaving a company because of this, why didn't you ask during the hiring process? It seems like you expected them to volunteer this.
Then actually understand the legal situation. In Germany they have websites where you can hire a lawyer for ~150 Euro to answer questions like this. I used it before and actually gave me some good insights. For sure better than asking random people on reddit that aren't even in your juristiction.
So check out if there is something like that in the Netherlands.
If there isn't, grab a phone book/google maps/... and call a few lawyers that specialize in labor law. Explain the situation and ask them how much it would cost to get you up to speed with this.
If you're lucky one might actually explain the legality of it free of charge.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
> why didn't you ask during the hiring process?
Because the two businesses are completely different!
farox@reddit
Well, live and learn.
But yeah, invest the 100 or so Euro and actually find out what they are allowed to do.
BanaTibor@reddit
Man it will not fly in the EU.
If the company is big enough to have HR, report this to HR. If is a small company, tell you boss that this is not part of your contract so you will not do it, especially not during christmas.
I live in Hungary but this would make HR tear a new one for that manager. This is a legal and PR nightmare for any decent company.
MooseGooeyBoogers@reddit
If you want to keep your job and you don’t already have a union, my advice is to talk with as many of your co-workers as you can about this first. See if you can get multiple people to raise issue at once by putting forth a single statement to your management where you all sign on. There is more power in numbers.
bonnydoe@reddit
They can't ask you for 24 hour shifts, that against dutch law:
"De Arbeidstijdenwet stelt regels aan 'oncall'-diensten (consignatie), zoals maximale oncall-uren per 24 uur en per 4 weken, en het recht op rust. Een werknemer mag maximaal 13 uur per 24 uur werken (inclusief oproeptijd) en mag niet direct na een nachtdienst oncall zijn, noch oncall zijn in de 11 uur vóór een nachtdienst. Ook zijn er regels voor het maximum aantal oncall-diensten, de rusttijd en de duur van de dienst."
https://www.shiftbase.com/nl/blog/regels-consignatie#:\~:text=Volgens%20HR%20kiosk%20is%20de,van%20€%20100%20per%20dienst.
fonk_pulk@reddit
Contact your union
Due_Campaign_9765@reddit
Completely unreasonable, unconventional for the Netherlands and probably illegial. You're completely right to push back.
Ask your manager to clarify things, ask why do they ask you to perform unpaid work that is not part of your contractual obligation and demand to see the request in writing. They might get cold feet after that alone.
Discuss it with your works council (required to exist if the company is above 50 people)
Coordinate with your other collegues who i assume also don't want to do it and consult with a lawyer.
I'd do all of the three things at the same time.
I've been living here in the Netherlands for 4 years and i'm friends with plenty of locals and due to some circumstance i discussed that topic with them extensively because we had our own unrelated fuckery with oncall.
On call in tech companies is either an optional contract that you sign voluntarily or it is a part of your duties which you sign up for when you are hired initially, there are no other exceptions.
In terms of pay, it could be either a flat rate just to participate or a fixed sum for each shift. But it's always paid. I assume if you agreee to it as part of the initial labour contract.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
Thank you, since you're in NL, your answer is very important. I already quit a company years ago for the same reason, I do not want to replicate it.
bonnydoe@reddit
Has your company mandatory CAO (collective agreement)? https://www.exact.com/nl/blog/salaris/cao
That CAO should tell you what your rights are in the situation you are in.
If you don't have that, on-call requirements should be in your contract. In your case I would gather with my co-workers to make a shared statement on what is reasonable compensation and time window for such duties.
Bobby-McBobster@reddit
This is perfectly normal, your contract will include clauses around doing anything necessary for the business regardless of contracted hours and this falls into it.
You can try to push back but you will definitely get your offer rescinded.
RandyHoward@reddit
I don't know the laws in the Netherlands, which is funny because I work remote for a company in the Netherlands. But in America, it is very common for devs to be part of an on-call rotation. I've investigated this before when I worked for an American company, and I found that my employer could basically demand I work at any time and if I didn't they could fire me with cause. American workers don't have a lot of rights though.
You're going to have to investigate the laws in the Netherlands and determine what your legal rights are. Then you have to determine what the consequences of pushing back against this are at your company. You might very well have the right to refuse the on-call work, but it may look poorly on you to your managers, especially if the rest of the team accepts it without issue. That may make it an uncomfortable work environment, or even put more scrutiny on your other duties, and lead to you eventually being let go.
But honestly, as a dev this kinda comes with the territory. I've never had a job where I wasn't expected to have some sort of on-call responsibilities. If you truly want to dictate your work hours, then you should consider working as an independent contractor rather than a salaried employee.
Dimencia@reddit
If the position is salaried instead of per-hour, you are already getting compensated (and since that's the only situation where it would be legal to ask you to do it without extra compensation, that seems likely). On-call support is pretty much industry standard for devs. If your product is good, it usually doesn't really come into play, and hopefully there's another layer of support that can handle small issues, but someone still has to be available in the off chance something goes terribly wrong
lokaaarrr@reddit
The rules are very different in the EU
Dimencia@reddit
Considering OP quit a job 3 years ago for doing the same thing, it doesn't seem like they are
lokaaarrr@reddit
I don’t know about the Netherlands, but in the UK, Germany, Ireland etc HR said we had to comply with local regulations that implemented EU wide rules.
Dimencia@reddit
Either OP has had two companies within 3 years that are blatantly breaking those laws despite surely having a legal team to make sure they don't break them, or people commonly misinterpret them. I'm leaning toward the latter
CanIhazCooKIenOw@reddit
Your salary compensates you for 40h per week unless explicitly in the contract that you have to do out of hours work (which on call falls into).
It’s standard in the Europe as well but it needs to be agreed and part of the employment contract. Being an US business is irrelevant.
Beneficial_Map6129@reddit
That's what happens when you work for an American company. We get paid big $$$ for a reason
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+netherlands
zacker150@reddit
By "American company," they obviously mean one HQed in the US .
No-Economics-8239@reddit
Certainly, if they are just springing this on you last minute before the holidays start and you just bend over without complaint you'll be setting a precedent you don't want. But what could/should be done entirely depends on you and your economic conditions and labor laws. Obviously, none of us want to be working over holidays or other special events. And yet, we also expect the lights to stay on and the Internet up. And that doesn't happen by magic. And either they are compensating you enough and/or have the staff available to deal with it, or they are not.
I started doing this gig back when the only people with pagers were drug dealers, doctors, and IT staff. And this was before you could just carry a company laptop with you almost everywhere. If something went down, it typically meant a drive into the office, which means you needed to stay close enough to headquarters to be available if needed. And back then, it wasn't web sites and applications that needed to stay up, but overnight batch jobs and other data processing that needs to be done in a timely fashion to meet contractual obligations. As one of the few people who knew enough about the data and process and how it all works to troubleshoot it when it broke, that meant holidays where I was the one with the pager and had to stay home for the holidays.
At some point I figured out how important I was to the process and was able to negotiate a suitable increase in compensation. But that wasn't always the case, and I haven't always had the experience and self-confidence and soft skills to navigate such situations successfully. And back when I was a bachelor I didn't have many obligations I needed to worry about.
At the least, I would expect this sort of thing to be a serious conversation that isn't happening behind closed doors. So you can talk about expectations on both sides, and how big your rotation pool needs to be, and how many shifts need to be covered and how critical everything actually is to justify getting people out of bed or canceling holidays plans and how big of a support network is needed to keep it all running if something actually catches fire. I had one case where I went into the office because the process had stopped dead, but there was nothing wrong on our end, and I was completely unable to reach anyone on the other end to get it fixed and we didn't have sufficient escalation plans in place to get it resolved in the required timeline. And there are few things as vexing as being paged to fixed something that you can't fix and didn't need to be paged over.
If these are all things they have already worked out and the missing piece was just adding you to the pager duty rotation, that is already a level of manipulation that seems to indicate a huge lack of respect and trust. And if all these things haven't been worked out in advance, and they magically think they can tell you to carry a laptop and remain sober and that will be sufficient to troubleshoot any eventual problem over the holidays, you all have more to worry about than just your current holiday plans.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. I genuinely appreciate it. I’ve been in the industry for about 20 years myself, so I personally experienced messy setups, late-night emergencies, and “fix this right now” situations. I also worked nights and odd hours because some of the systems I supported were tied to live events in completely different time zones. So I’m not new to the realities of operational work.
I agree that on-call can absolutely be reasonable when it’s planned, agreed upon, compensated, and part of a proper rotation with clear processes.
CanIhazCooKIenOw@reddit
Is your company big enough to have a works council (more than 50 employees).
If it’s not in the contract it’s a clear violation - ignore all the Americans here that are used to be work slaves.
TornadoFS@reddit
Don't bring anything with your manager if you are on probation. Call your union and ask for advice
YugoReventlov@reddit
Belgian here.
Currently working for a company that pays to be on-call.
There's about 100 people in the company.
Each day you're on call, you get a fee. For each call, you get a fee. Depending on the time of the alert, you can also get overtime hours.
I believe it's around €45/day gross to be on-call, and like 25 or 50 per alert you have to handle outside office hours (+ overtime: 1 hour per hour started).
The people who are on-call did sign an addendum to their contract stipulating stuff like being available, having access to a computer/internet, being sober, response times, etc.
I've heard of much bigger companies than ours where things are more like you describe. But - here at least - I don't think you can be required to be on call outside your work hours without something mentioned in your employment contract.
You should definitely make it clear to your employer how much being on call impacts your personal life. Especially if you have kids or god forbid a partner that also has to be on call from time to time...
lokaaarrr@reddit
I dealt with this from the US side of a big tech firm with many on-call teams in the EU (as a sr engineer I had a lot of responsibilities in this area).
The deal we had was:
you get a fraction (often about 1/3) of the on-call time (outside normal hours) back as comp time
if you actually have to work in something, you get that back as well
And you need to take the time fairly soon after
It seemed like a reasonable balance to me
Immediate-Quote7376@reddit
> I'm considering privately messaging my manager to discuss
The fact your manager hasn't notified you pro-actively is very surprising. For sure you would first need to get on-boarded to the on-call schedule, which would include shadowing a more experienced person on the team on how to respond to incidents? If you haven't done that I'm not sure that on-call is important for the company in the first place.
The most professional response here would be to notify your manager that you can't be on-call during Christmas week due to you having had planned to be offline long before this schedule was put on you. Your manager's response would most likely be - sure, but find the replacement for your shift (which is his/her job to do and not yours necessarily). Then you can try your luck with your team mates for covering x-mas - not for everyone in NL it is an important / special week; also the on-call shift is usually easier during x-mas since you probably have a lot fewer customers using your system during that week (but depends on your domain of course) and companies usually do not push new changes to production well ahead before the holidays.
Jmc_da_boss@reddit
Industry standard in the US, but NL probably has better laws?
Mapariensis@reddit
I'm based in Belgium (so not quite the same, but hopefully close enough ;) ).
We went through two iterations of the on-call system over the past few years. First, we had 12/7 with one rotation per development team, i.e. active hours were 08:00-20:00 every day, including weekends. This included responding to automated alerts. In the current system, we're on a 24/7 rotation, but with a larger group of people so you have fewer on-call weeks in a given year. During off-hours, it's call-only, so if you're being woken up it's because a human on one of our 24/7 ops teams has a serious problem and made the conscious decision to drag you out of bed. In practice, this is a pretty decent filter.
Other than that, the conditions between the two systems are comparable:
So TL;DR: yes, you're getting hosed.
Odd-Drummer3447@reddit (OP)
> So TL;DR: yes, you're getting hosed.
ahahah thanks for the brutal honesty :)
ScriptingInJava@reddit
I'm in the UK for context.
You should not only account for the time when you may work, but also for the fact that you cannot disconnect from work to enjoy your time outside of your employment. Can't travel to a theme park because you need a stable internet connection and quiet environment etc.
alanbdee@reddit
At least in the states, it's not uncommon for a salary person to be expected to hop online if there's a critical outage. But it's a vary rare occurrence, at least at good companies. Requiring that you always available and in a state to conduct yourself professionally isn't.
For example at my work. If there was a critical outage then the whole department gets notified. Those of us who are available hop on a call while we figure it out. If you can't, you don't join. So I'm not prevented from traveling, drinking, or whatever. It's our wider focus to make sure our systems are stable enough that this never happens.
My wife, who works hourly as a lab tech in a hospital, it is common but all the employees in the lab rotate. So she'll have a few days of being "on-call" where she has to be ready and able to go in at any moment followed by a few weeks of not having to worry about it. They schedule holidays separately and everyone takes their turn. She's also hourly and gets paid for that time. If it kicks her into overtime, it's 1 1/2x her hourly rate. If it's a holiday, it's 2x. They also have additional offsets for evening/graveyard.
I would check with other devs to see if this happens often. I'd make it clear to my manager that I'm not willing to accept this. I have no problem hoping on if I'm available but I'm not willing to rotate my whole life around being available at any moment. They need a better solution.
DogmaSychroniser@reddit
If its not in your contract and they don't have any vague 'additional job duties' clauses, you can just refuse it without compensation and a contract change. If they don't provide the latter tell them to take a hike
Goodos@reddit
I'm not familiar with Netherlands specifically but across the EU it's typically a contract clause, and on-call time is compensated + work done during on-call is vounted towards your hours i.e. if you are on call from 22.00-06.00 and need to adress an issue from 02.00-03.00, you get compensation for 8 hr of on call time and 1 hour is counted towards your normal week time (+ possible night work comp or OT if you go over those limits). Check local laws, I wouldn't be surprised your employer is breaking a vouple of those. Contact your union and ask if you guys have those.
Epiphone56@reddit
I've done on call in the past, on a rota basis with other devs (UK based). We were paid a flat fee for the days we were on call, plus overtime for any extra hours worked. You should be getting either one or both of those if they expect 24/7 support.
maxip89@reddit
just write a little mail that your on call hours will be 500$ per hour because it's not in the employer contract.
They will you remove you from that list immediatly.
Try to sound it in a funny joking tone.
Sheldor5@reddit
No this is not normal.
not part of the contract = no obligation
just say no, all your colleagues should say no, and if they persist get legal help because they could try to illegally gain some reasons for layoffs.
moduspol@reddit
I’m not familiar with laws or norms in the Netherlands.
But I’ve been OK with on-call duties for small companies when I’m also given a lot of leeway for fixing whatever process failures are risking incidents. I’ve been less OK with it when I’m on-call for infrastructure that someone else sets up and maintains, and I’m not empowered to spend time during normal hours to prevent incidents. Then it just feels like I’m being handcuffed into baby sitting someone else’s bad decisions / planning.