Comment by pakitan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pakitan | Hacker News Reader

> A Google site-reliability engineer starts work at 9 a.m., leaves at 7 p.m., and works in the evenings until about 10 p.m. He's on constant alert because he must respond to urgent pages within 5 minutes. "Go home at 7pm with my backpack and fully charged laptop. If I get a page on the road I need to pull over and get on the system in 5 mins to start debugging. An email alert can wait until i get home.

Can anyone please comment on the veracity of this quote? I'm interested in a SRE position and I was researching details a while ago and the only info I found on work hours was someone saying that, given that Google has employees all around the world, you don't really need to do crazy hours or night shifts. However, the comment above indicates 12 hour workdays, which is insane. Is that every day? How does it compare to a Software Engineer position at Google?

https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-normal-working-day-for-a-sof...

The important bit from that page is:

"I am on-call about 10 days per quarter, usually 3 shifts of 3-4 days each. I am paid extra for my on-call (after-hours) work, but not at my full hourly salary because I only work when there are problems after hours (e.g. on weekends or late at night.)".

Note that depending on the exact team, Software Engineers at Google may also be part of an on-call rotation.

Yes, indeed, turns out BI just cherry-picked the worst part.

Ten days per quarter, or forty days per year, in few-day shots at a time. That amounts to a monthly shift, and is just frequent/heavy enough to have a real impact on your personal life. No doubt the "extra" pay (let's be real, you'll never be in the inner circle if you forgo the duty) is barely enough to be noticeable.

> No doubt the "extra" pay (let's be real, you'll never be in the inner circle if you forgo the duty) is barely enough to be noticeable.

When allocated 100% to cash (vs. vacation) oncall pay amounts to more than an extra full paycheck every quarter.

If you don't notice an extra $10,000/year post-tax then please, send some of your moneybags to someone who appreciates the value of a dollar. Like me.

>barely enough to be noticeable

For me it's (off the top of my head) about 10%. Definitely noticeable.

Huh it's normal in the UK to be paid for being on call and than paid at a higher rates for any time at BT it was 4 hours minimum for any call 1.5 1.72 (after 8 pm) and double time and a day on Sunday.

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