Comment by cdoxsey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdoxsey | Hacker News Reader

Being a backend engineer with occasional on-call responsibilities, this is an unfortunate reality I've had to deal with.

My religious tradition (reformed evangelical christian) takes the sabbath pretty seriously, as stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith:

> VIII. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

Notice the last statement makes an allowance for acts of mercy and duties of necessity, which would certainly include things like being a Doctor or a Policeman, but I've always considered my duties as a Software Engineer being on-call to be borderline on whether or not they meet that standard. Certainly my employer(s) have thought they were necessary... But who are we kidding. Most of this stuff isn't life or death and waiting till Monday to get it fixed probably wouldn't be that big of a deal.

(I should probably mention that although these are the standards of the Church I attend they're rarely enforced in any meaningful sense - being treated more as a matter of personal conscience than of discipline... and particularly when it comes to the Sabbath)

Still I wrestle with it... not having a firm enough conviction to quit a job where I've had to do it, though if it were an every week thing, particularly if I had to regularly miss the Sunday service, I almost certainly would.

If I could make one plea, it would be for tolerance and compromise. I realize religious beliefs can be pretty weird in this day and age, but they're often sincerely held, and there's usually a solution available if the company is willing to consider it. (for example I'm just fine being on-call any other day of the week, and a surprising oddity of the reformed tradition, we don't really have religious holidays: https://heidelblog.net/2017/03/the-westminster-divines-on-ho...)

Isn’t there some sort of religious discrimination potential if your employer refuses to accommodate a limited concession that doesn’t preclude you fulfilling your duties?

Or some such?

having on call responsibilities and being available 24/7 are significantly different. On call is a structured rotation that is usually explicitly part of a job description.

Unpaid work is unpaid work (wage theft), full stop. You're not paid for 40 hours and then "heh, you're on call outside of 9-5 for the next week, but that's what you're paid for". Call it what it is: wage theft.

That's not how many employment opportunities work. Allowances, expenses--hell, even salaried compensation are all ways in which non-40hr-work-week positions are handled. Whether compensation/interaction in these circumstances happens ethically versus exploitatively depends on many things, but not "whether or not someone works more than 40 hours a week for a non-hourly-wage position".

Indeed, I’m pointing out the labor law deficiency that needs remediation. Your employer should never be able to have unconstrained demands on your time for a fixed wage.

I'm not sure I understand. You're saying that it's not possible for someone of sound mind to decide to trade a technically-unconstrained probability distribution of demands on their time (with exit rights) for a fixed wage, no matter how high? And that two parties should be prohibited by law from making this exchange?

I'm not making a general-purpose argument against regulating nominally consensual labor agreements, but this specific example is an awfully weird context to decide that people need to be protected from themselves. I've had jobs where the exact hours of oncall rotations weren't explicitly spelled out in the contract, and I made the decision that the oncall rotation was worth the fixed pay. Trading fixed amounts of money for probability distributions is all over the economy (this is what insurance is), and you're the first person I've ever heard suggest that it should be prohibited.

Would you mind elaborating on why you think this is so egregious that people need to be protecting from themselves so they don't engage in it?

We’re not talking about unique agreements. We’re talking about below or at market rate compensated roles where you’re expected to be available after hours, on top of a 40 hour work week. No, I don’t think that should be allowed unless you’re compensated specially for the time you’re on call, as well as when you need to actively engage while on call (removing exempt employee status for technology professionals). This is no different than roles like nursing, or IT in developed countries with robust labor regulations.

People don’t need to be protected from themselves. They need to be protected from employers, who have more power than labor (through at will employment and a lack of collective bargaining). Simply because some are willing to work for free does not mean that technology professionals as a whole should accept such a poor arrangement, because it’s been normalized as such by employees who accept it.

European countries are moving in this direction (prohibiting email access outside of business hours), and I hope to see more progress on this front in the US over time.

The attitude that salaried employees are expected to be available at all hours is such a US labour market thing.

So much so that a (US headquartered) multinational I worked for gave up trying to get their EU employees to do weekend on call, as the team didn't want to get treated that way.

not disagreeing with you but, in the USA the default is you're owed overtime if you work more than 40hrs. The law list exceptions to that. "Salaried" is not a valid exception. The exceptions are explicit jobs and have various requirements. Unfortunately IIRC computer professional is one of the exemptions. Should maybe ban together to remove that exemption.

Also apparently being paid > $100k a year is an exception

https://www.flsa.com/coverage.html

California in particular has stricter exception laws

https://www.worklawyers.com/exempt-vs-nonexempt-employees-ca...

Lots of companies have mis-understood this law, thought just claiming "salaried" was enough and were later found in violation.

I'm not sure how I feel about the $100k exemption. One the one hand I hate it. On the other hand I'm being paid $100k+. Seems like a trade off. Like would I rather have $99k + overtime pay or $150k. The advantage to $99 + overtime might be the company manages better since they don't want to pay overtime. On the other hand they could just budget $150k internally and still demand the overtime and maybe end up only spending $130k total or something.

Of course as a programmer I'm already exempt apparently which feels kind of BS, same with artists. But I should probably research any counter arguments.

salaried software engineers (in california at least) are exempt employees and thus don't have to be paid overtime.

I'm pretty sure if you are not an exempt salaried employee or you are hourly then you do in fact have to be paid for the time on call that you are actually working and if you are not that is in fact illegal and wage theft.

Anecdotally I have a friend who works in IT that is on call and does get paid for all the time on call that he is working.

as another response said on call can or can not be exploitative depending on how it's setup but that is a separate issue from whether it's wage theft.

> Anecdotally I have a friend who works in IT that is on call and does get paid for all the time on call that he is working.

That's actually very common, at least around here outside of the startup scene. There's usually a fixed amount for just being on call, plus an hourly rate (often higher than regular rate) for actually having to do anything.

Last time I managed a team of on-call staff, they all got paid for 2hrs at their regular rate for each weekday and 4hrs for each weekend day they were on call (whether they got called or not), plus time and a half for every hour they worked (rounded up to a minimum of 1hr per incident, so three 5 minute "quick fixes" counted at 3hrs at time and a half, which on a weekend meant 7hrs additional pay). We tried to make sure everyone by default got a rotation of a week of weekdays, a single two day weekend, then a whole week of just office hours. They were free to negotiate swaps amongst themselves as needed (it there was not required payroll adjustment), and to request schedule adjustments as needed (mostly for when the change would need payroll to be informed). We ended up averaging fewer than 10% of on-call shifts getting paged. Everybody was happy enough with that arrangement - it was about as good as any on-call arrangement I've ever been part of.

I've done that for production support on an ecommerce site we developed before fully handing off to the client. Spreading the on call work as much as possible among the dev team I think is ideal, because it adds a shared incentive to employ good practices during the day to reduce incidents after hours.

Taking the shifts was optional and had a similar pay structure.

Yes this is true. And it's a good thing to remember to ask about when applying for jobs (and seems like an entirely reasonable thing to want to know before you sign up)

It was helpful when I had a more structured on-call rotation and once we switched to 3 day shifts I was able to trade off shifts so I almost never was on-call Sunday morning.

Unfortunately I was also team lead on a temperamental system for a while which had many production issues, so despite the on-call rotation, things often escalated. It was not a fun year.

That said it only happened a few times that year, though the constant threat of it wears on you after a while, and it's precisely that issue which lies at the spirit of the Sabbath. It's not really a day off if you're worried about the pager going off all the time and constantly checking slack, even if nothing is happening.

I guess you'll have to be in such a situation to find out. I have an ancestor who moved to America as an Orthodox Jew in the early 1900s. He would find work on Monday, and work until Friday. If the employer wouldn't let him take Saturday off, then he would quit and look for a new job. This cycle eventually stopped when he got hired by a seventh day Adventist.

One of the (sorry, few, IMHO) secular ethical benefits of religious behavioral allowances is the "sacred weekend".

The thing is, what if I claimed membership in a religion that only allowed me to work 3 days a week? ;)

> they're rarely enforced in any meaningful sense

Your church sometimes enforces its rules about what you do outside of church in a meaningful sense? How does that work?

Many churches practice church discipline, for example with the PCA:

http://www.pcahistory.org/pca/3-443.html

It mostly applies to leadership, but also members. Possible "censures" include:

- Admonition (ie calling someone out for their behavior) - Suspension from Office (you have to stop being a deacon) - Suspension from the Sacraments (you can't take communion anymore) - Excommunication (you can no longer be a member of the church)

In practice I have only ever seen it done publicly in 3 circumstances:

1) Someone in leadership committed adultery and has to step down 2) An elder was excommunicated after abandoning his wife and children, leaving the church, and pulling a "Leaving Las Vegas" to live a life of total debauchery 3) A church leader was suspended due to abuse of power

Leadership cases are kind of obvious, because the damage they do can be so bad. I mean it's bad enough in a workplace, but it can be devastating in a Church environment, which functions a lot more like a family. The Presbyterian process might seem a bit overblown or silly, but I appreciate the care with which they take these issues.

I think a culture of discipline is generally useful in a Church, at least when it comes to admonition and encouragement. Adultery, drunkenness, gossip, greed, anger, ... all of these things affect others, and church discipline is attempting to admit to that problem rather than simply ignoring it. When it's done in a loving, winsome way, it can be a good thing. I screw up all the time, sometimes without even realizing it, and being called out for it can help me do better.

Though I also recognize disciple can be, and often is abused. It can really turn cultic fast, and I've seen that a little in some communities, especially when it focuses on minor, tangential issues (like the music you listen too, the way you dress, your politics, etc...)

So to recap, in the PCA, I've only really seen it with leadership. In the OPC church I briefly attended, it was suggested that if you were unwilling to baptize your children, or made a habit of working on Sunday, you may not be able to join the church, since that was a clear and important teaching of the church and you would clearly be violating it, hence, discipline.

I was more wondering how they would even know you were breaking the rules. I guess they rely on members all being part of the same community and policing each other?

Yes it's supposed to start with another member bringing it up in private, then maybe reaching out with several members, then bringing it before the elders, etc.

Missing church every Sunday would be particularly visible, especially in a very small church, so a pastor might want to have a conversation about it.

I suppose most other issues would come about from other members... in the most extreme cases the church should hand the individual over to the civil authorities (a husband beating his wife, a leader molesting children, etc) Sadly that sometimes doesn't happen.

But there are a lot of edge cases and wisdom issues, so generally if there's not a clear teaching, the church will leave it as a matter of conscience.

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