Am I dramatic to consider quitting over new on call expectations
Posted by csgirl1997@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 224 comments
Recently, my organization eliminated a number of roles, and as a result developers are now required to be on call with no adjustment to pay/contract and also no real descoping of our existing responsibilities. This was not something that was originally part of the role when I signed the offer many years ago.
My team supports a global product, but also just lost all of our teammates abroad. That means that when we are on call, it is for 24 hours. A very small team remains, so right now we are on call roughly one week out of the month.
To make matters worse, the folks who were eliminated were doing a great deal of work behind the scenes that my team now has to get up to speed on. I feel like we are kind of drowning as a result.
My direct management is apologetic and doing their best to get us more resources, but this whole situation is leaving me wondering if the job is worth it anymore. 1/4 of my life having to be available to an employer at moments’ notice is just… a lot. Even if they do get more resources and the frequency of on call lessens, the whole thing just feels toxic and leaves a sour taste in my mouth. At this point I kind of have my foot halfway out the door.. have any of you all found yourself in a similar spot?
serial_crusher@reddit
I think a 24 hour oncall rotation is valuable. It helps encourage you to write software that doesn't fall over in the middle of the night. But transitioning to that model involves a lot of short term pain.
A company doing that needs to accept that day to day productivity will slump while the team addresses stability issues. So yeah, totally fair to quit if they're demanding results without supporting the transition well enough.
In the meantime, just set strong boundaries for yourself and live by them. On-call means quickly triaging after-hours issues and doing the bare minimum to get them off your plate until the next morning. Oh the server crashed? Restarting it fixed the problem? Cool, here's a ticket to look into the root cause tomorrow. Ok, it happened again same night? Let's disable that feature, then re-enabling it is in scope for tomorrow's fix. Etc. If you're doing it right, it doesn't take substantial time out of your day except in very rare cases. For those cases there's "I was up until 2 AM fighting this fire, so I'm taking today off."
Reasonable bosses agree with that. Unreasonable bosses will fire you from the job you're about to quit anyhow--oh no.
OgFinish@reddit
I understand the psychological impact of on call, but the real question is - how often are you actually being woken up? Something very similar recently happened to me, but realistically I’m only woken up once or twice a year (knock on wood).
Outside-Storage-1523@reddit
Yeah...but the psychology is there, and you have no time when it is going to spike up. I'm also on 24/7 and we are so barebone that everyone has to do it every 3 weeks. Most of the time it's OK, but there is always once for a while you have to stay late or wake up at early morning. There are also other hassles that we simply can't fix because they belong to other teams.
BestGreek@reddit
If you can find something you think is better for you, you should. I've been part of on call rotations for the last 20 years and I really don't like on call.
Being on call for something I built I don't mind as much, but being on call for things others build and maintain I really don't like.
If something triggers on call does management make it a priority the next business day to fix the issue or do they let it keep going off? If your managers prioritize fixing on call issues so they don't repeat then on call might not be too bad.
csgirl1997@reddit (OP)
“Being on call for something others build and maintain I really don’t like” feels like the crux of my issue here tbh. Without revealing too much info, my team basically inherited code touched by probably at least 20 teams over its lifetime for a service with several hundred million users.. It is to a point where the tech debt pile feels almost insurmountable tbh
gefahr@reddit
I'm very confused at you being at a company whose products have hundreds of millions of users, and you being unfamiliar with this style of oncall expectations.
How many years of experience?
csgirl1997@reddit (OP)
I wouldn’t be so sure that it’s standard.. if I have learned anything at my current org it is that the teams backing some massive services are appallingly dysfunctional. IMO in my org’s case it is that we scaled far too quickly at the expense of defining processes that any sane org of this size would have
Outside-Storage-1523@reddit
Yeah, exactly, we have many things that others built and we have no knowledge how it even got into the pipelines. I wish you good luck, but don't rage quit -- if you don't have an offer at hand, at least just coast and let them lay you off, while recording everything. Use all sick days and vacation days, too. Use all allowances, now. If they want to cut costs, that's the next thing they are going to cut -- unlimited vacation "for employee benefit" and zero allowances "because data shows no one uses it".
BestGreek@reddit
If you’re really concerned, maybe it’s a good time to casually look around at the job market and in the meantime, you’ll probably go through a few on-call cycles and see if it’s really a big issue for you.
Or maybe there’s a different group within your company you could transfer to assuming they have an opening and you just don’t have to mention to your bosses that on-call is the ultimate reason you’d like to move.
GlobalCurry@reddit
I was put on call for a project where I had warned against a bunch of things the dev team on that project were doing on it during cross team reviews. Sure enough, those were exactly the things I was getting pages for because they did it anyway.
lokaaarrr@reddit
1 week out of four is pretty extreme for 24x7
What is the “hands on keyboard “ time expectation for getting paged? What is the typical weekly volume? These matter a lot.
Outside-Storage-1523@reddit
We are now doing 1 every 3, and if somehow someone is sick it's 1 every 2, lol. We are also stuck between upstream and downstream and are doing on-calls for stuffs we know absolutely nothing about. Anyway looking for a way out.
ninetofivedev@reddit
Don't quit. Find a new job.
Seriously, you people need to let management feel the pain of their decisions. They fired the around the clock staff, guess what... You don't get around the clock support.
Stand back and watch it all burn. You weren't involved in making the decision that led to this, you don't have to suffer the consequences.
Outside-Storage-1523@reddit
Find another job and leave once you find one. Give minimum number of days of notice and be done with it. This is not a bridge you are coming back. Also, make sure to miss some on-calls during late night/early morning.
But don't quit without a job offer.
downtownmiami@reddit
Yes
floofsnsnoots@reddit
No
Wassa76@reddit
Your manager is unlikely to get those resources.
Make them feel the pain of the cuts. Can you take back the on-call time in lieu?
Otherwise look for a new job.
matjam@reddit
the other strategy here is to allow some of the plates to hit the floor. If you manage to keep all the plates spinning then why would they get more resources?
DWALLA44@reddit
This is a very bold strategy.
_marcx@reddit
I’ve never had this strategy backfire, at some point higher ups have to feel pain. It’s truly the only way. You make an effort, and you try your damndest to make sure there’s no irreversible damage, but you don’t overextend yourself to hit unachievable goals. If they want you oncall, projects are going to suffer. If they want projects, oncall is going to suffer. Let some shit break.
lurking_physicist@reddit
Call it "Organizational Externality Backpropagation".
darkstar3333@reddit
Same here. You've eliminated X capacity and as a result we can only achieve Y work with the staff we have.
What is the most important work to the business, if you cant make a decision I will.
People aren't machines, expecting to run them at 100% for even a month will kills throughput and engagement for months/years as a result.
Senior leadership tries to mimic the behavior at FAANG companies without realizing the reason they can get away with it is because of the compensation being 10-50x what they are offering.
ppepperrpott@reddit
As an Engineering Manager, I say absolutely (and please) do that. You mask a capacity/planning issue if you don't. It also shines daylight on other managers making idiotic decisions
69f1@reddit
Plates hittong the floor do not have to be four-hour production outage. It can be something as mundane as "we can't ship the feature X in two weeks, because we have to account for the workload resulting from on-call".
GoGades@reddit
That is not to say that the occasional four-hour production outage is a bad thing - it's a very effective way to convey the message.
signedupjusttodothis@reddit
I utterly get the spirit of it, but all it's ever gotten me was fired (to the relief and betterment of my stress-levels, though, to be fair).
DWALLA44@reddit
Yeah I can't see it ever working out in your favor, but it's a damn good way to go out.
recycled_ideas@reddit
It depends on how you do it.
"Let plates drop" doesn't mean stop doing your job, it means doing your job and only your job. There is a difference.
If you are on call and you get a call, ensure you can take time in lieu, if that means that you don't have enough working hours to meet project deadlines, then they don't get met.
Companies get away with this shit because employees pick up the slack. If you went to them and said you needed double your salary this month because times are tough they'd laugh in your face so why are you working double time for them?
matjam@reddit
if the other alternative is "work until you go insane from being overworked" then ... its worth a shot.
k958320617@reddit
Management must be made to feel the pain of their own bad decisions!
raughit@reddit
What does this mean?
GoGades@reddit
If I spent 3 hours on a zoom call solving shit overnight, I'm not coming in at 9, I'm coming in at noon.
raughit@reddit
And if you get paged during that impromptu time off, then what?
syklemil@reddit
The way our on-call rotation works is that if you have a night shift you get the days off, even if nothing happened during the night. Similarly if you have either a day or night shift for the weekend, you get three days off (1+2 or 2+1 before/after the weekend depending on whether it's the day or night shift).
What OP describes sounds utterly horrid to me.
brewfox@reddit
Three hours in the middle of the night to me is worth a whole lot more than three during the day. I’m talking 5 off probably.
WestEndOtter@reddit
Basically they mean if you won't be paid for on call time, take leave for that number of hours instead
CorrectPeanut5@reddit
My move would be to get the CVs out and line up a new job ASAP. Either the company is on the rocks. Or the company is run by complete ghouls who are making your life painful so they can have better bonuses. In the later case I'll go out of my way to connect key employees with recruiters.
RandomlyMethodical@reddit
This was my thought as well. Company sounds like it's failing. It could go under in a week or it could circle the drain for years. Either way it's going to be a shitty place to work for the rest of its existence.
GoGades@reddit
Or... Summertime is around the corner in the northern hemisphere - maybe the CEO needs a new boat.
Or... A new VP was just hired and he wants to show off his "cost-cutting/right-sizing" chops to said CEO.
CorrectPeanut5@reddit
Or trimming costs in order to juice the books for a perspective sale. The best petty revenge is to get as many engineers in the group new jobs.
defecto@reddit
Ya pretty much this.
Let things fail, let customer experience get worse.. pretend to work hard to your manager, dont be too honest and say you are letting things fall through.
I hope the rest of your team doesnt work too hard either. Let deadlines etc pass, make releases late. Blame the on-call schedule if someone asks why things are late.
Get a severance, rather than quiting.. and spend time applying to jobs rather than working too hard.
Obviously the management has decided that they dont care about quality of product or quality of life for their employees... dont burn yourself out.
ilyas-inthe-cloud@reddit
You are not being dramatic. Going from normal dev role to 24 hour on call one week out of four, after layoffs, with no pay adjustment is a material role change no matter how politely management frames it. I would start interviewing now, not three months from now. Best case they fix it and you stay. Worst case you already built yourself an exit instead of waiting to burn out.
Irish_and_idiotic@reddit
Your American aren’t you? I can’t see any other nationality even considering this…
OP that’s insane from your employer
Urik88@reddit
Sadly, same thing in Canada. My old place put a program in place where you'd get paid for being like $50 for being on an on call schedule and even more if you get a call , people were lining up to take these shifts, but sadly I never saw another place doing something like that.
ZunoJ@reddit
50$ is absolutely nuts. That's almost nothing. Here it is 300€ extra if you are on call (so 2100€ extra per week) and if you get a call, you have paid time off the next day
dirkpitt45@reddit
Canada is even worse than the US often for work culture. Less pay, same shit. I left two jobs because of dumb on-call schedules. One only gave us time in lieu, and the other had some dumb dollar amount like /u/Urik88 mentioned. Crazy that people just accept it.
csgirl1997@reddit (OP)
You hit the nail on the head. My country is.. a place 🙃
Irish_and_idiotic@reddit
I have no advice unfortunately just wanted to confirm your feeling that what your employer is asking is insane.
dfryer1193@reddit
In the US, it's almost inconceivable that a tech job doesn't have at least some on-call rotation expected of its developers.
The place I'm at now has 3-day working hours on-call rotations once every month or so (huge team), and off-hours/weekend on-call is shared throughout the entire working group, resulting in a single 3-day off-hours rotation every 3-4 months.
This is the first tech place I've worked where on call requirements are so light. Most of my professional experience has included a 24-hour on-call rotation lasting ~1 week every 6 weeks or so.
That said, the fact that this is a new requirement, changes things a little bit. I'd at least expect additional compensation for the additional on-call requirements if you weren't expected to be on call previously.
marssaxman@reddit
You and I must have very different concepts of what a "tech job" is, because I have never had the slightest trouble finding work as a developer which had no involvement with on-call problems.
supyonamesjosh@reddit
Quitting is dumb. Get a new job first.
No shame in looking due to it but this isn’t usually uncommon. There should be rotations so it shouldn’t impact you too much but if it does go looking
RegularAd9643@reddit
Quitting is not always dumb. Don’t rush to take a new dumpster fire just to escape this one.
supyonamesjosh@reddit
If you have no job you wouldnt be... more likely to rush?
aneasymistake@reddit
I’ e never taken a job with on-call requirements in 29 years of work. If my employer suddenly demanded it I would definitely consider leaving and I definitely wouldn’t do on-call without agreeing on contract changes, including salary changes and a time limit for the siuation.
marssaxman@reddit
Likewise, I have never held a position with on-call requirements and would have to be in desperate straits to consider one. If an employer suddenly tried to spring that kind of change on me, I would certainly start looking for a new job (this is not a good sign of company health, anyway) and in the meantime would expect renegotiation of compensation.
keelanstuart@reddit
Any time they change the social contract on you without your consent and without compensation, the desire to quit is not "dramatic" - it's called self-respect.
Maxion@reddit
For Americans reading here, this type of contract change would be illegal in Europe.
CorrectPeanut5@reddit
Unless you are a contractor, under contract, most Americans have no work contract. I am a contractor and it's very rare for a client to want me anywhere near on-call since I charge by the hour and would quickly blow their budgets. Most contracts require me to have approval, in writing, to exceed 40 hours.
prumf@reddit
There is no way this is legal, even in America right ??
If my boss did this, he could sharpen his new "contract" to a point and sit on it, and I hope he has fun doing so.
If he isn’t happy then he can either fire me or make an actual fucking offer.
larsmaehlum@reddit
If employment is at-will your only options are: Quit, or try to encourage your collegues to collectively take action by striking or refusing to pick up the phone when on call. The result will be more or less the same, but the latter sends a stronger message.
This shit is why unions are a good thing.
prumf@reddit
Yeah 100% agree. Btw I looked "at-will" employment, and it’s fucked up. How is that legal ??
ings0c@reddit
That’s the neat thing; it doesn’t.
nero_djin@reddit
It is a bit of a complicated pickle.
In an optimal world it makes employment more fluid. Companies will hire since they can always fire.
It cuts both ways. Companies need to stay honest because employee can always leave for a better company.
It also reduces risk for small growing companies since hiring someone is not a risk since layoffs can happen fast. This means more smaller companies become drivers of local economy faster.
In theory it enables hire without a proven track record, which is in general beneficial for the economy.
At-will is fine only when workers have credible alternatives. When they don’t, like in tech atm, it stops being a two-sided mechanism and becomes employer leverage.
zuilli@reddit
I feel like this sort of "gentleman's agreement" around work (and most other things if I'm being honest) will never work anymore. Everybody is out for themselves only and if you give them a hand they ask for an arm. Gone are the days of mutually benefitial relations between employer and employee.
On one side you have unscrupulous businesses that would sell their own mother for a 0.1% increase in profits and on the other you have shitty workers that will dodge responsibilities and half-ass when not being monitored constantly making the responsible ones pay for the shitty actions of a few.
prumf@reddit
😂
keelanstuart@reddit
I mean, anything can be legal... even things that are wrong or unfair to some parties; good and bad laws are the same - made by people, who are flawed.
As for how it protects anyone: it doesn't. But, for Europeans reading this, what if you didn't have to give notice? The "at will" employment sword cuts both ways; if your employer treats you badly, you can simply walk out the door and never return, without any personal legal liability. I have, once, used it in my favor... but I would obviously prefer a better system.
larsmaehlum@reddit
The American logic is simple: If it’s good for the company, it’s good for the economy. If it’s good for the economy, it’s good for the people.
It’s pretty fucked up.
alinroc@reddit
Completely legal in the US
prumf@reddit
Damn
Frozboz@reddit
My job abruptly fired or reassigned all of our QA and then told us devs we would now be responsible for QA work, including automated tests. We are still expected to maintain the same velocity and no one to my knowledge has had their compensation increased to account for the additional work.
prumf@reddit
I mean it’s ok doing QA, but mathematically you will have less time to do everything else. All of this is crazy.
belkh@reddit
the problem is they can just fire you
prumf@reddit
Well if they fire you you get compensation, so there is no way I quit. You stay to honest to the contract, do your shift, and when it’s done, turn off your phone.
Working_on_Writing@reddit
It's usually legal in the UK. Most employment contracts here come with a clause which basically says "the company can modify this contract at will, for any reason as long as it doesn't impact your statutory rights".
There was a push from C-suite to drop this on my team at the last place I worked, and legally it was A-OK. I threw my toys and was able to put a stop to it thankfully.
Maxion@reddit
You don't have any working hours legislation in the UK? In Finland, depending on how the on-call is structured, counts as working hours.
Working_on_Writing@reddit
We do, but it's really weak: https://www.gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours
I have frequently worked more than the 48 hour limit. Basically nobody cares about it. The fact you're supposed to resolve it through ACAS is a joke - they can't do anything really.
oupablo@reddit
I got into a huge argument at work over this exact thing. About 6 months into working there, they suddenly added me to an on-call rotation. I argued with the manager that there was no expectation for this. It was not included in the job description and was never mentioned during the hiring process. His response was, "this is typical for an engineering role." My response was along the lines of "not typical enough for it to be listed in the job description or be part of my job for the past 6 months. I've never been on-call somewhere where it wasn't brought up beforehand and definitely not a primary on-call somewhere that has an entire site reliability team."
Ultimately this amounted to putting me on the rotation with the expectation that I'll look at it if I'm near a computer but if not, good luck.
keelanstuart@reddit
That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. "I didn't sign up for this... do you want me to quit?"
oupablo@reddit
I'm convinced the answer to that question is "yes". I'm also convinced most companies think the only important people in the entire org are the execs and sales. Engineering is just an annoyance that slows down sales.
RiPont@reddit
Also, if they do this, there is no need for notice. Notice is a courtesy. They already told you, "fuck you" by doing this.
papawish@reddit
Any time they change the contract on you without your consent. Period.
strongly-typed@reddit
I have no self respect. When you quit, can you refer me?
YetMoreSpaceDust@reddit
You can try to get a new job, but don't be surprised if the new job ends up being a lot like the old one.
This shit isn't going to stop until we unionize. So it isn't going to stop.
FrogTosser@reddit
Start looking for another job. On call can break you in ways you’ve never imagined.
JakoMyto@reddit
Not standing for it but can you elaborate as I am considering an on call position that is once every 2 months. I more likely to decline this anyway but I am interested in learning more.
Maktube@reddit
I'm not that guy, but I think it's about expectations. I've had great experiences with on-call (like legitimately great, not just "not a bad experience") and terrible ones. 100% of the time it comes down to whether or not the company respects you and your time, and imo the easiest way to tell is what expectations they set (and how) for what happens before, during, and after both an on-call rotation and an actual incident.
E.g. for somewhere that does 1 week call rotations: Good Before rotation -- one week of being on 'second call' + shadowing the on-call person. Your job is first and foremost to refresh your memory about procedures, see the kinds of things that are currently resulting in calls and how they're being handled, update any documentation as needed, etc, and as a distant second doing whatever your normal job is During an incident -- the entire company works for you. There is a clear chain of escalation for every product area, ideally (company size and many other things depending) all the way up to the CEO (for emergencies so bad that they need immediate damage control with clients/investors, for example). You're the sole decider of if/when to escalate and when you escalate, you stay in charge until and unless you explicitly hand off to someone else. After an incident -- BLAMELESS post mortem, and you have carte blanche to do (and ask for) whatever is needed to make sure that particular incident doesn't happen again.
Bad Too many possibilities to list, really -- unclear escalation chains, responsibility without corresponding authority (this is a big one), no post mortems (or similar. No effort to learn something from each incident, basically), etc
Ugly "It's just call, if there's a problem you'll get paged, you fix it, and you go back to sleep"
FrogTosser@reddit
I couldn’t have said it better, thanks!
crecentfresh@reddit
I still jump a bit when my phone rings from being on call like 6 years ago
zica-do-reddit@reddit
Are you doing rotation? How often do you need to be on call?
ElasticSpeakers@reddit
You were shipping production code and you weren't on-call before?
csgirl1997@reddit (OP)
We had folks explicitly responsible for monitoring issues. If they couldn’t resolve it, they contacted devs in a time zone that was within working hours
kamikq@reddit
Yeh. I work for a FAANG adjacent company (so also global presence) and being on-call 1 week every month has been the norm for me the last 4 years.
If you only have 4 engineers on rotation, the surface area that you own should be rather “small”. It seems like you need to improve the reliability of your services to decrease your on-call responsibilities.
ElasticSpeakers@reddit
Wild - my company mostly did away with dedicated support/ops folks ~15 years ago
GlobalCurry@reddit
I've only had on call as described by OP at one company out of 5 companies I've worked for. One other place I worked for did on call but it was a startup and the "CTO" himself usually handled it, if he needed someone else they would at least get dinner and time off of the normal hours.
JCii@reddit
2005 called and wants its ivory tower back
ElasticSpeakers@reddit
lol, what? In 2005 we had dedicated support and were not on call, so, no
JCii@reddit
you just described the ivory tower
ElasticSpeakers@reddit
In your own words, wtf are you trying to say?
JCii@reddit
Before the 'devops' push in the early 2010s, developers were siloed in their ivory towers, protected by dedicated support staff and ops teams. They didn't deploy their own code and they didn't support it.
In the early 2010s, people like Gene Kim popularized the idea that developers should feel the pain of the code they write by also deploying it and supporting it so that they write better code.
So, OP complaining that they lost their support staff and is having to go on-call sounds a lot like they've been evicted from their ivory tower.
ElasticSpeakers@reddit
Ok - sounds like we're on the same page then. Not sure why you commented that to me then and not OP, but cool, have a good one fellow time traveler
JCii@reddit
because im old and all these buttons look the same
gefahr@reddit
I feel that.
-no_aura-@reddit
Some time on-call is normal. Being on-call 24/7 once every 4 weeks is not.
ElasticSpeakers@reddit
Might want to re-read - they said it's a single 24-hr shift which is normal, but the team is small so OP has to go on duty again sooner than they'd like.
oakman26@reddit
When OP said "That means that when we are on call, it is for 24 hours"
I was thinking.... yeah no shit that's the definition of oncall.
warm_kitchenette@reddit
It's not mandatory to do on-call as 24 hours, especially if the engineers are the first responders. I could only imagine doing that as an absolute emergency.
If a company has SRE/DevOps during working hours or a big slice, like 08:00 - 23:00, then it becomes a lot less disruptive. Especially if it's a US-based business where traffic will naturally plunge.
But if it's a global site, with no natural traffic dips, no overseas people in the right time zones, then 24-hour support is a health- and relationship-ruining nightmare. Even if the company has a great setup, good code, good monitoring, automatic intervention for some issues, there's just too much that can go wrong. There's a reason why denying sleep is an effective torture method.
wittgenstein1312@reddit
I have worked at 6 different software companies in my career, and have only had "on-call" duties at one place, and that was the very first place I worked, where we did waterfall releases every quarter and the entire dev team had to be on-call the weekend of the release. Absolutely nothing close to what OP is describing.
Creepy_Ad2486@reddit
One of the products I work on doesn't have an SLA, so we don't have to do any on-call work. Generally, outages or issues are the result of upstream systems or infrastructure we have no control over. It's kind of weird, but also kind of nice.
audentis@reddit
Where I live this would be illegal. So not, not dramatic - it's good to protect your own boundaries.
ThoughtfulPoster@reddit
You need a) comp time (at least 1:1 for time called, preferably 1.5:1 or better), and b) a stipend, preferably per call. If you don't get that, walk.
gefahr@reddit
This is what I do for our teams. If your night gets interrupted you get a whole day.
No stipends because they're highly comped on base already and this is part of what they sign on for, but I do give spot bonuses if they had their weekend ruined or etc.
ThoughtfulPoster@reddit
The stipend almost isn't for them. It's so that the person who decides whether or not to call someone at 2am can be asked why they're wasting company money, because that button isn't free to press.
It's pigouvian, not remunerative (even though they still do get the money).
gefahr@reddit
Ah that's clever, thanks for explaining. Not an issue where I am now, but I can definitely see this helping at past employers. One of them in particular had a tendency for the first responder to just start activating the oncall for every adjacent service; a scattershot approach to figure out what the issue was.
TheCharalampos@reddit
Dramatic? No, this is on management. I think I'd personally start looking elsewhere and laying down some boundaries.
Nottabird_Nottaplane@reddit
24 hour on call, as a regular part of your job, when you’re not a doctor in a hospital is lunacy.
hippydipster@reddit
I would say the folks who benefitted from eliminating employees should do the extra work that results. The extra work should be distributed the same as the extra savings.
super_powered@reddit
Few things: 1. Early on you mention a contract, if you’re a contractor instead of an FTE, I’d look at your contract terms, many contracts will actually dictate work hours. We have 1 week on call rotations at my job and contractors have to be excluded during non work hours (so FTE gets like double on call technically, this would be more of a problem if it wasn’t for…) 2. Consider how often are these on call issues actually happening? Is it every day? Once a month? How often are they outside of work hours? Do you guys have metrics on these things? My team personally has had like a single P2 outage in like 3 years (hence the double on call being not a huge deal)
ppepperrpott@reddit
It's a seller's market. Yes your circumstances have 100% materially changed but is the upheaval of starting over, learning new people/ways of working/tools/products and serves worth it? Especially if you are likely to run face first into another DevOps/SRE culture
KangaNuby@reddit
I think it's unreasonable to give you on-call responsibilities without adjusting your conditions.
That said, the pay for on call on my team is minimal and we don't get paid per hour. It's just flat fee independently on how many times you get paged.
As a result, we consider fixing any ongoing alert as our top priority, which resulted in a much more reliable service. The first 6 months where we inherited this new service where chaotic, but now I just get paid to carry my laptop around. I got pinged 2 times after hours in the last year.
TheOneTrueTrench@reddit
Tell them you're looking forward to the increased pay. When they say there isn't any, or it's not enough for you, say "no".
mobb_11@reddit
They changed your job rules without asking you and didn’t pay you more. That’s not being dramatic. That just means you respect yourself and know you deserve better.
gnomodojardim@reddit
Sounds like they gave compensation for everyone to quite but they don't want to give it to you and and your small team. They're deliberately making your life hell so you quit on your own accord without compensation.. This is why unions exist.
AggressiveAd5248@reddit
I’ve written and deleted this a few times. I don’t think you’re dramatic to consider it, but just see how it goes first.
Im a big advocate for what I call mercenary engineering, if a company isn’t paying you enough or giving you growth opportunities, leave. They will shit on you when times get tough, they shit on your team mates already, treat them with the same kindness.
In this case I’d see how it plays out, if it’s horrible the first week, but actually the issues that cause it are fixable and that gets prioritised, and incidents trend downwards over time - thats great to be involved with and if you haven’t got prod support experience, Is probably a good thing to get under your belt.
The other people doing on call may be used to playing hero rather than engineer, a quick sql script here and hooray the day is saved, pats on the back. The fact that the thing that caused the issue isn’t fixed doesn’t matter, because they’ll just do another sql script.
Also look at what and why things are being alerted on, an alert is for customer impacting issuss, internet weather that made a health check take slightly longer than normal is not an alerting issue. There needs to be a buffer of acceptable losses before people actually get woken up out of sleep.
Willing_Box_752@reddit
Trying to get resources.. but they already had resources
pseudo_babbler@reddit
This is the funniest bit. I don't mind a bit of on call, can be fun. But this here, where they just say with a straight face that they're trying to get more resources, that's the most corporate management thing of all time.
miianah@reddit
lmfao
_dekoorc@reddit
I'd be looking for a new job, ASAP. Even if they weren't like "your job description just changed a lot," you should be looking for one since the company just laid off half the people lol.
CubicleHermit@reddit
Always be interviewing. If you want to match your comp, aim for tech companies. I wouldn't quit over it, but I'd absolutely leave as soon as you find something that you're comfortable making the jump to.
a-cloud-castle@reddit
So, how often are you really getting called in your "on-call" time?
Management does this because they have to guarantee that someone is covering in case something goes wrong. If stuff rarely goes wrong, you won't be doing anything, but you take credit for being "on-call".
If shit hits the fan constantly, then that's a different story. But this sounds like a pretty minor thing. If it turns into a major thing, then make a decision if it's worth the stock options for the extra effort.
alkbch@reddit
What credit is OP getting?
AllIWantForXmasIsFoo@reddit
there's an added stress and lifestyle changes to being on-call whether you get called or not.
alkbch@reddit
Instead of quitting, you could stay and refuse to do the on-call duties. Let them try to fire you, which may grant you unemployment benefits considering the situation.
qrzychu69@reddit
I once quit a job over on-call becoming exactly what you describe - a week out of every month is not yours. We got paid additionally for that time, but so little it was not worth it.
Picking up the phone was worth a bit, because for actually working we got paid 200% for minimum 2h even if it was only 15 minutes.
It was still too much. Also, depending on where you live (meaning if outside of the USA) being on call for 24/7 probably isn't legal. In Poland for example the max is 12h and then you need at least 12h of break if I remember correctly. We were "asked" to sign a paper that we volunteer our time to work around that.
I would say don't feel bad about quitting - it's not what you signed up for, more work, more time, same pay. That's not how having a job should work.
Be sure to first get a new job before quitting, market is still a bit shit
Vega62a@reddit
Lot of answers here that have never been in an org with oncall before.
Oncall is pretty industry standard at this point. But here's the deal - you dont need to work more than 40 hours a week, because you are salaried. If you are paged and have to come in and work for 2 hours, come in late the next day. If you are paged for something, prioritize making sure you never get paged for it again. Do this to the exclusion of other work. Tell your stakeholders upfront, you aren't delivering this week because of production support commitments. Stick to it.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
and yeah this sorta... perception that on-call is something that is like opt-in kinda boggles my mind.
i get it that there are folks wanting to be protective of their life outside of work, and like require things like on-call to be spelled out in a contractual agreement but,
maybe I'm just old school or I just think it goes with out saying - i feel some duty to the availability of the things I contribute to, i knew what i was signing up for. I also feel some duty to try to make sure to make things better for the next rotation.
and overall, at least in terms of optics, its just like... an exercise in teamwork
take from that what you will, i'm sure not everyone feels this way, but... this is coming from a dad of twins where my first on call i got paged in the middle of changing diapers, definitely post midnight, pee flying in the air, and somehow I made it to the morning.
I had a lot more diaper money after that rotation (I was a contract employee and got approved for any extra time logged responding to pages)
gefahr@reddit
I think a lot of people here work at companies that are not what you or I would think of as "tech companies." That's not a diss, it's just an entirely different culture.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
that's fair, i should say that the role where I first joined on-call was in fact at a big tech company
though, i think this attitude about work isn't just limited to the idea of an on-call rotation; its kinda like the 'extra effort because shit has to get done and this has my name on it' which i've done as a developer in a variety of settings, including solo
gefahr@reddit
Same, and I agree, and I related a lot to your comment upthread, which is why I was comfortable lumping us together haha.
I know the trope here is that there's no reason to go above and beyond, but I went from staff eng to VP (4 promos) by doing exactly that.
also: do not recommend. I get paid a lot but my IDE is google docs now. :(
chikamakaleyley@reddit
lol. well i'm a bit seasoned as well (18 YOE) so maybe that's why we kinda see eye to eye
tho, not quite the same career trajectory. I'm self taught and just got lucky with some opportunities, I enjoyed a big chunk of cruise control in the middle. Got my act together and very enthusiastic about finally getting a role w/ 'Senior' in front!
Definitely zero regrets (I made sure to enjoy a social San Francisco life) and I actually love coding now more than ever
gefahr@reddit
haha, sounds like we've had very similar paths before I made the management "mistake." I also lived in SF for the 2010s (left when covid made everything suck), and am self taught as well.
glad you're still enjoying coding. I'll live vicariously through people like you.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
OMG. this is kinda my feeling as well (my reason for leaving was I started a family, back home in San Diego now)
But as things started to return post covid i just felt like... like there are too many rules and you need an app for everything, ultimately i said Sf felt dull after covid
I was there Aug 2009 - Sept 2021 and thankful I understood what rent control was LOL
gefahr@reddit
omg, guess where I moved to? LOL. I also moved down here in summer of 2021...
next I'm going to find out we worked together.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
HAH. Tell me you live or work in Mira Mesa
gefahr@reddit
lol, no, outside of Ramona.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
omg that sounds so far LOL, cheers
gefahr@reddit
30 min or so. a decade on bart sent me running for the hills literally. lol. Have a good night.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
like sometimes i just want to hold and read the greasy laminated menu at a hole in the wall, not scan a menu and order from my phone LOL
Retrojetpacks@reddit
Gotta give you the down vote for this, totally flying in the face of workers rights here. If your total comp is high enough I guess you might have a point, but it's not for many of the people in this thread
chikamakaleyley@reddit
understandable, i didn't anticipate everyone would agree with this
To be clear, I do agree w u/Vega62a - you get paged and spend an hour triaging an incident late night, you deserve that hour back and you should be adamant about taking it
For some transparency, i don't think my comp is where it should be, its never been generous like you see for a lot of those who have been opportunistic and play the job hopping game. But I do okay, definitely trending in the direction toward my current goal.
Anyway,
Point i'm trying to make is, on-call aside, if i'm asked for some level of extra SWE support, my mind doesn't jump to "this is outside of our agreement, am i going to be compensated for this?"
Maybe I should; but now that I have time to think about it, its more like, "they'll take care of me later". Because those folks have, in different ways, later in my career, at times when I probably needed it the most. This might sound like fantasy or whatever, I get it, but I can say that being an available and reliable resource when needed def has helped carry my career; i've "cashed out" at diff times
Sorry for the lack of brevity; the last point i'll make is yes, I see how differently folks in this thread feel about this type of mentality and I think that it's more common to see their response as, that these devs should have more respect for ourselves. And so i think maybe we just value our work differently. I don't see anything inherently wrong how I operate. Cheers
chikamakaleyley@reddit
lol whew, thought i was alone here
OP part of the on-call process is also to groom the alerts, but also through the sprints there should be some effort to improve things to reduce those incidents.
cuz it's not like you're just there to put out fires, and then you just hand off the firehose when your rotation is up
JCii@reddit
What's that zoomer term, quiet quitting? Try that while looking for a job.
gUI5zWtktIgPMdATXPAM@reddit
That concept is simply doing the work as it was contracted. Not really quitting so nothing quiet about it.
Sunstorm84@reddit
No on call in the contract? Great then no need to do it
umtala@reddit
The only question to ask yourself is, can you get a better job somewhere else? You have to decide for yourself how much of your life you are willing to trade for money.
If you can find a better job, choose that job. If no, stick with the one you have. They are not going to be shy about laying you off if they need to find "efficiencies". Find your own efficiencies.
maretard@reddit
How much are you getting paid and what's your level? What you're describing is the standard experience in FAANG, if your comp is comparable then you were getting lucky before.
gefahr@reddit
I just replied to another comment of OP's where they the service has hundreds of millions of users. So I'm just as confused as you are.
maretard@reddit
Yeah at that level of scale I'm shocked all the eng teams are not already on oncall rotations. I guess there are some painful legacy companies with that kind of userbase, but assuming that's where the OP is, the comp will be shit, this reeks of panicked short term outsourcing, and they need to GTFO.
brainhack3r@reddit
I had a situation like this a couple years ago, and you can use the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) to your benefit here.
If you have a disability and the company requires you to do a task that is in conflict with your ability, they have to provide an alternative or not require you to do that specific thing.
I had PTSD from being on call from my previous company (LONG story) and my doctor literally told me to NOT take a job that was on call.
So I brought this up with my boss when they just told me overnight that I needed to be on call now. Like, it wasn't a discussion. There was no mention of additional comp, et cetera.
Just by the way, here's your new on-call schedule.
And I went down this path, and the company was working with me on it, and they took it very seriously, but I ended up leaving and taking another job.
I think you can go down this path, but note that your company won't really be happy with you, and you might end up being first on a list of potential layoffs.
gefahr@reddit
I just want to say, as someone who gets looped into these situations with HR and legal, this is an oversimplification of what ADA requires. And if you try this route and fail, you'll be top of the list for the next layoff.
Don't shoot the messenger, but it does not provide the blanket protection you think it does.
Neither of us are lawyers, but the gist is that they only have to provide a reasonable accommodation. If the role now requires this, and they don't have another role for OP, I believe they would be OK in terminating them.
brainhack3r@reddit
Yeah, I didn't take it to fruition, and also I really tried to underscore that I was not trying to cause any problems. That I wasn't trying to be a jerk.
But reasonable accommodation, I think, means that they have to provide some small change, but you're still responsible for the task. But if there's no reasonable accommodation, they can't force you to do it.
But again, I didn't carry it to fruition, so I'm not actually sure how it would play out.
And I definitely agree with you on the layoff thing, but I find out in practice if you try to make up for it some way, generally it's okay.
I mean, if I was a manager and some employee was doing this, I'd be kind of frustrated, so I'm not trying to push that on anybody.
Objective-Feed7250@reddit
This isn’t about being dramatic, it’s about your boundaries being ignored
PragmaticFive@reddit
If that is not part of the contract, is that even legal? In my country it would not be, it would require an updated contract. Compensation for introduced on-call should be given.
SellGameRent@reddit
If you would seriously consider quitting, do us all a favor and see if you can successfully unionize first
Awkward_Past8758@reddit
While I love the idea I really don’t think unionizing will work in this field given the market conditions. Better to keep the lights on, decrease velocity to something that won’t get you fired but allows you to apply and interview at “dentist appointments”, and bail when the time comes OP.
gefahr@reddit
lol, I love that everyone uses doctor appointments this way now. To the point that when I had a bunch of clusters of appointments a couple months ago (fractured my foot), people I was close to slacked me asking if I was interviewing.
Tiny-Sink-9290@reddit
For 24/7 on call.. they need to pay you 3x your pay.. to match the 24/7 expectations and nayhting pas 8 is 1.5x salary.. so if you make 100K... you should immediately see a 300K increase (400K total) for being on call 24/7. Or.. dont answer the phone.. ever.
i_wanna_change_@reddit
Hahahahahahahaha
gefahr@reddit
I can't believe this sub is free.
Party-Lingonberry592@reddit
I recommend seeing how bad it really is first. If you're being called non-stop for a week straight, then I would consider alternatives. Being on call once every four weeks is a lot. I imagine your manager is making the case for more resources. Put your manager on the rotation, make it once every 5 weeks. If there's management in other locations, put them on as well. If they're worth their salary, they'll pitch in.
csgirl1997@reddit (OP)
Yep at the very least, our direct management is definitely putting their money where their mouth is and doing everything they can to help.. don’t know what to say for folks at the upper management level at this point though.
gefahr@reddit
Hi, it's upper management. We made this decision and your manager is in the awkward position of promising you things they don't have control over.
That said, I agree with the other comments: see how bad it is, and see how your company compensates you when you get paged at nights/weekends, first.
My teams are expected to take comp time ASAP if they have their night interrupted, and I have a small budget set aside for spot bonuses if it was a bad one.
samelaaaa@reddit
At a lot of places putting a manager on the rotation won’t help that much. We have flattened hierarchies enough that most line managers are have “Director” titles and manage 3+ teams. I am in this situation personally and while I have a technical/IC background there is just no way I could keep the requisite amount of context to be able to jump in and debug a prod issue on each of my three teams. So if I were on the on-call rotation, it would realistically look like me paging the TL after a minimal amount of triage.
586WingsFan@reddit
They got rid of the offshore team?!? You work for a terrific company. I would be willing to be on call 24/7 7 days a week if it meant not having to deal with anyone offshore anymore
gefahr@reddit
That, and as an engineer I have never not been on call for the code I deployed. At least one week every other month, most frequently one week a month.
At good companies, in good teams, that resulted in maybe one outside-of-business-hours page per quarter. Bad teams? Multiple per month.
It's crazy how fast a team works out what is and isn't worth alerting for when they're the ones being paged. Bad monitoring hygiene that persisted for a year gets straightened out in a week. Memory leaks that caused eventual OOMs suddenly not all that impossible to track down. Etc.
yourparadigm@reddit
You make a compelling argument...
Good_Roll@reddit
You make a good point actually
JasonBravestar@reddit
On-call was forced on us after a reorganization. Well, not really forced, but most of the team had to accept it. Despite being fairly paid for it, the change was not welcomed and it's still annoying at times. I cannot imagine not even being paid for something that is not in your contract.
On the positive side, we realised that being oncall for your own system leads to better alerts and ultimately to a better system. The old team had flickering alerts that were ignored and lacked alerts for important stuff. Dashboards were also lacking. You might find that the previous oncall team is doing a lot of work just because the root problems are being ignored.
So the change can be good for the company, it's likely not good for your personal life. You need to be compensated for it.
_Kine@reddit
Start looking elsewhere, work regular hours, if it becomes a big enough issue somehow let them fire you so you can go on unemployment.
JakoMyto@reddit
How can you start being on call without a contract change? And what legal consequences there might be if you don't make the on call duties if there is no contract change?
Also note that normally contract changes needs to be signed by both parties. At least where I live.. so this is not a legal advice and you need to check law in your country. So contract change without comparation package is something you maybe don't want to sign.
budulai89@reddit
You can do whatever you want, but FYI there are many companies that have 24hr on call.
ReachingForVega@reddit
If your contract doesn't allow for it I'd say no and look for a new job.
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
Believe it or not, you can use LLMs to solve a lot for you. Of course, naysayers believe is best to “on call” lol
RedditNotFreeSpeech@reddit
Setup an ai agent to take calls for you. If they're going to be disrespectful it should go both ways.
afewchords@reddit
All depends what your negotiating power is, can you even find a better job in this economy, when companies eliminate employees they expect some low percentage of attrition also.
farzad_meow@reddit
which country and rules apply to you? i suggest something along the lines of when you are on call do not go over your time limit and be clear how much of your time went into that. it may give you insight on how to make systems more reliable. therefore over time less time will be needed for oncalls.
at the end of the day if they mistreat you, decisions to find a better employer falls on you.
rebornfenix@reddit
They added responsibility and required work time with no additional compensation.
You effectively got a pay cut even if manglement doesn’t see it that way.
Getting a pay cut is never a dramatic reason to go looking for another job.
BoBoBearDev@reddit
Just turn off the cell phone.
Izkata@reddit
Kind of along those lines: Stop all work except improvements that would prevent you from being called. Purely beneficial to you and the business so I don't think it would be seen as not doing your job, but it would still cause problems for the higher-ups when there's no new features or work being done.
lunacraz@reddit
yeah not great but respect is a two way street
they dont respect you, you can feel free to not respect their "on call"
the only thing is you might feel bad for your coworkers UNLESS you can also get them onboard to just not deal with on call
what are they going to do, fire you? great!
travelinzac@reddit
Quitting in this economy? Good luck bro.
Oakw00dy@reddit
IANAL and laws in your state may vary, but that seems like a substantial, negative change in the terms of your employment that could constitute a "constructive dismissal" which could allow you to resign and file for wrongful termination. If there's a bunch of you in the same boat, might be worth pitching in and getting an opinion from an employment lawyer.
Plane-Profession8006@reddit
Depends. Never been in a situation over the last 25 years in engineering where on-call rotation is not part of the job.
Leadership needs to meet the team and invest in operations of the product(s) with the changes.
Force the priority of operational work so on-call is not an issue. If product/tech leadership does not do that look for a new job and keep phone on silent until you find it.
ZunoJ@reddit
Aren't there any work hours in you contract? I would never sign a contract which let's the employer change that at will
Naibas@reddit
Is it dramatic? Yes -- assuming your platform isn't a total disaster where actually getting paged after hours is a rare occurance.
Even so, if your team can't get together and form SOPs and SLIs to establish a coherent severity system and priority on how to stablize the product, what are you even doing there?
Every role I've had for the past decade has had an on-call rotation that generally lasts a week. It's standard practice.
tossitoutnextweek@reddit
I’m glad it’s not just me. Once a month is definitely not ideal, but our on call amounts to 4-5x per year per engineer (including management) for a week at a time. If the pager goes off twice per month off hours it was a busy month.
honestduane@reddit
it’s true that it’s perfectly normal for software development engineers to be as part of the on-call rotation in order to assure that bugs and issues can get fixed and have the proper support available; but from the sound of it, they have unrealistic expectations about your availability for extended periods of time and so if they’re not able to make that limited to a week at the most per person with at least a month of recovery afterward before they can do another week like that - Aka if they have five people willing to do that work - then it’s normal to do it for extremely short periods of time in a startup situation or you’re a founder or something, but as an employee, it depends on how much you make in statistically you’re probably making enough that bacon legitimately ask you and it’s expected to be a part of the team that you do it for short periods of time on permissive schedules that’ll allow you to recover between each attempt so that members are not forced to wear themselves down or sacrifice them for the overall team.
Your Leadership’s ability to actually lead just sounds like shit, tbh.
Good_Roll@reddit
Every on call rotation system I've worked has involved some kind of extra compensation, they are asking you to work for free and you should respond appropriately.
internetroamer@reddit
Look for new job but don't quit until you get one. Coast in general because you're done at this place.
No way they give you the 50-100% pay increase that being on call 1/4 the time is worth. At most they give you 10-25% and after a few months you find it isn't worth it and start looking for a new job anyways
kagato87@reddit
I've seen this pattern in many circles, particularly in support. There are many red flags in play, and you should be planning your exit. The company is downsizing its team. Either it is becoming insolvent or it is under a shareholder squeeze. It doesn't matter, both are a death sentence for the business.
Developers should NOT be expected to respond to service calls. A developer being paged would be acceptable if it's an escalation, and the sysadmin team has already tried to correct the issue or otherwise determined that a developer is needed (and not just that "it's not in the call center script" junk some companies like to use).
Even if your pager almost never goes off, you still have to be available to work. That means you ARE working (legally, in many regions). They want you to work for free, to do more for free. Even if that pager only goes off once a year, you've identified other patterns that mean it is time to leave. Do it on your terms, after accepting a better offer elsewhere.
colindean@reddit
I always share this talk from devopsdays years ago anytime a team enters on-call for the first time:
Ethical and Sustainable On-Call - Jon Daniel - devopsdays Pittsburgh
RespectableThug@reddit
Agree with what others have said, but my main question is: how frequently do you get paged while on-call? I’m on-call a similar amount, but I very rarely get paged. So, it’s not too bad.
Doesn’t change the fact that I always gave to be ready just in case I get paged, though. So, there’s that.
dryiceboy@reddit
Everything is about compromise. The job itself is a compromise you're willing to make. You exchange time and energy for money. If it doesn't make sense to you, then move on.
If your organization is already at that point, the battle to keep it running at a normal pace has already been lost.
AndyKJMehta@reddit
Negotiate paid holiday hours for every hour you are “working” as Oncall after normal work hours
thedifferenceisnt@reddit
No
blottingbottle@reddit
Oncall is common at startups and big tech companies. The simple question is whether you can get an offer at a place with no on-call at a compensation package that you like. If not then you have to suck it up.
Disastrous-Mail-2635@reddit
24/7 on call is only really possible with a team of at least 6, unless you want terrible burn out, or you have a stable system without much prod support. I worked on a team of 4, and primary on call was expected not to work on any sprint tickets during their week long rotation. We had two week sprints, so basically every other sprint was a half sprint for you. It sucked.
tiagocesar@reddit
Having a week long on-call rotation for important products is pretty normal, but offering no compensation for it is bonkers.
mq2thez@reddit
I’ve been on a one-week-a-month rotation after major layoffs and it was hellish. Truly awful. Everyone in upper management will be pushing the survivors to work even hard, do more with less, blah blah bullshit, and then you can’t even disconnect when the day ends.
Get the fuck out. When they ask why, be specific.
serg06@reddit
One week a month is pretty brutal, even if the pay is good 😅 did they give you a timeline for when the on-call would be reduced?
pl487@reddit
Are you sure your stock in a company that is laying off everyone but a small team is going to be worth anything?
ShapedSilver@reddit
No not dramatic, I did basically the same thing a few years ago and my situation wasn’t even as bad as your sounds
z0d14c@reddit
On-call is fairly normal in this industry I am sorry to say (in the US at least). The one part I would probably argue against is rotating among 4 people. I would like to have at least a solid month of being off-call before I'm on-call again.
spacechimp@reddit
While I expect this post violates rule #3, I'll bite.
The cold, hard truth: It's just a matter of business and self-respect. You are providing a service for a fee, and not doing favors for a friend. If you aren't being compensated for going above and beyond...DON'T. If you have no other options, stay. If you have better options, leave. Simple as.
Different_Suit_7318@reddit
In the words of one of my favorite ex-colleagues, "sometimes you have to let it break".
JustPlainRude@reddit
Tell your boss to cover on-call themselves until they've hired more people.
mrmigu@reddit
Talk to the rest of your team. If they have the same feelings as you, reject the change as a collective
sweetiepup@reddit
Look for a new role and see if the terms are better.
It doesn’t make sense to quit if you don’t have another thing backed up. It does make sense to take on a new role if the terms are better.
AccountExciting961@reddit
In every place I worked for or with in over 20+ EOY , on-call rotation could not be less than a fully staffed team - with an absolute minimum being 6 people. Either the company you are working for is about to go under, or your management is grossly incompetent. Either way - the solution is the same.
Awkward_Past8758@reddit
How much leverage do you have? I worked at a small company that did some similar bullshit a while back and we as a department essentially mutineed unless we were able to either get 2x pay overtime for on call hours worked or 1.25x for weeks where we were supposed to be on call. Luckily it was a startup and we had sway because the company would have lost their dev team otherwise. If you can’t argue for comp on extra hours worked/anxiety induced time while not working then maybe it’s time to actively apply to other jobs while on the clock.
belavv@reddit
I wouldn't quit, but I would look for a new job.
If you aren't available 24/7 during that week what are they going to do, fire you? You may have a good case for collecting unemployment if they do since that was just dropped on you. Either way better to line something up and then quit instead of just immediately quitting.
hobesmart@reddit
You don’t have to quit now, get another job lined up first. Then negotiate a raise with no on call time wrotten into your contract. If they wont do that, leave for the other job
dazmeister@reddit
Yes, quitting in this situation is very dramatic - doesn't mean it's the wrong call though.
Stay safe though, have something new lined up beforehand.
Source: been in a similar spot before. Left after a few months, no regrets
_itshabib@reddit
Not dramatic. Normal to not want that.
your_mom13@reddit
We had the same, but our on call is an 8 hour shift not aligned to our workday (because the people in EU and India get the good hours).
It's something I'm considering leaving over. I have to be on call every 3 weeks for a week at a time.