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Comment by hiou | Hacker News Reader

Anything in the world can be part of a job description. That speaks nothing about if it is reasonable or ethical.

Many, many, many industries have overnight staff to handle these issues, but likely because software engineers tend to be young, lack a union and are paid salary with no overtime compensation, it is somehow acceptable in this industry. Which is why I honestly asked that question. Why do you and the above poster, find it so normal to be on pager duty when so many other industries, often with much more critical services, do not require it?

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Why do you, and the above poster, find it so normal to be on page duty when so many other industries, often with much more critical services, do not require it.

False premise. Many jobs require it, including low paid ones across many industries. Many of my jobs which were not in IT required it sometimes (like working at a golf course and being called out for a jammed golf cart garage door in one case - which I clocked hours for btw).

If it's part of your job description and the salary you get covers it then I'm not seeing why you should "find a different job."

> If it's part of your job description and the salary you get covers it then I'm not seeing why you should "find a different job."

Two reasons:

1. Your salary doesn't cover night and weekend pages in most first world countries regarding labor law (the US is backwards in this regard, but luckily the economy does well enough at the moment jobs are a plenty).

2. Quality of life. If your job requires on call rotation, interrupting your off-work hours or your sleep, and you're not getting paid enough (<$100K/year), immediately start seeking out another job. It's a sellers market.

So, in other words, find a new job if you don't make enough to justify getting paged. Right, OK.

That has nothing to do with this article, though.

Just doing my part to ensure people who read my comment aren't taken advantage of by their employer.

Real industries that run 24-hours a day and have to be up all the time, run three shifts, they don't screw their day-shift into having to be available at the drop of a hat to cover.

They also pay significant overtime multipliers when they do have to call somebody in outside of their scheduled hours.

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