Ask HN: How to say no to be on-call? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to say no to be on-call?

25 pointssdevonoes26 comments

I work as a software engineer (in their orga chart I'm senior) and my current company has the policy: "being on-call is not mandatory". I have so far rejected being on-call succesfully (it is paid, but I value more my time than my money). Soon my salary will be reviewed and the topic is on the table again: I have been asked if I may reconsider my position regarding being on-call.

The company explictly says that being on-call is not mandatory, there is no problem about this. Other colleagues at my same level are doing on-call and bring this topic (among other topics) to the salary review process to be considered in their favour.

I'm not going to change my decision, but I'm wondering how that will influence on my future salary. Even if the companay is transparent about this topic, I definitely think that not participating in "non-mandatory" stuff in my company makes me no favour.

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This came up the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25650905

>>> I definitely think that not participating in "non-mandatory" stuff in my company makes me no favour.

At equal aptitude, employees with a higher engagement with the company are more valuable.

They have finite resources, and obviously those resources will be allocated in a way that benefits the company the most.

So yeah, you should expect your coworkers to get a bigger raise, and you should be fine with it. They won't love you all equally, it's a company.

I sort of disagree, and here's why:

In your assessment of the situation, the equation is:

     value brought to company without overtime + value brought to company by doing overtime = salary

but the overtime is paid, so:

     value brought to company without overtime + value brought to company by working overtime = salary + overtime pay

presumably, what's negotiated annually is salary. if overtime is compensated separately, then it really should not figure into salary discussions outside of maybe some small consideration for their not having to staff a separate on-call team.

>> but the overtime is paid

having employees that are available for overtime provide burstable capacity at a cost that scales linearly.

in comparison, adding extra employees due to a temporary requirement is a worst case scenario. hiring is very expensive, takes time, you need extra infrastructure, training, you may operate unnecesarily at excess capacity and there are diminishing returns.

I think there is another factor missing from both equations. If someone is willing to be available for overtime, that is valuable in and of itself, even if that person is never asked to do overtime. The company has the option of asking for overtime with employee x, and not with employee y, and could be persuaded by employee x to pay for that optionality.

It is important to be explicit in discussing what you want to your bosses, and important for them to be explicit about what they want from you. Treat it as you would any negotiation. Put the details on the table and talk about them, and do so calmly, respectfully, but firmly. A good manager should appreciate that kind of upfront and direct conversation. Obviously if you have dishonest or manipulating mangers, then that is a different story.

If the company has an official policy saying that on call is not mandatory, that is good. That said, there is all kinds of corporate doublespeak and unspoken assumptions with these kinds of things, like with unlimited vacation. Even if they are sincere, know that the consequences may be more than a lack of raises. You may lose opportunities for advancement, be put on less interesting projects, or given more mundane roles.

I personally am like you, and don't want to either work on-call or be promoted into management anyway. Many people are like that, especially as they get older and have kids. Most non-startup companies have a healthy need for some SWEs to be on-call, but certainly not all or even most of them. However, there are certainly some workplace cultures with that startup mentality that equate working at all hours and being on-call with being a good employee. Those are the kinds of places that celebrate when everyone needs to work ridiculous hours nights and weekends to ship before a deadline, rather than seeing that kind of crunch time as an unfortunate failure of management that should not happen again. If you're in one of those companies, my only advice is to start looking elsewhere.

If you want to continue to get raises and especially advance, you'll have to prove yourself in other ways, especially if it sounds like you're also opting out of other "non-mandatory" social activities. Be exceptionally competent, reliable, and responsive during your work hours. Work well with others, both on the surface and deep in the work itself. Smile, laugh, and make smalltalk with the people who like smalltalk but not with the people who don't. Don't call unnecessary meetings. Also, write excellent and well-organized documentation about your products and workflows, so that if something goes wrong during the nights or weekends, you're not going to be a blocker.

There are occasional emergencies where the ability to call you for a problem would enhance your value. As it sits, the inability to call you does indeed reduce your value to the company. It is one factor they will weigh when they assess you, and it will be a factor in any future job hunt.

> I'm not going to change my decision, but I'm wondering how that will influence on my future salary.

You can say no. They can give you a smaller raise for it. Honestly, I don't see this as a problem - you get to choose between maximizing raises vs. setting boundaries in your work. It is great that they give you that choice, as most places I know would enforce being on-call as part of your base salary.

i was in a similar situation last year where my manager kinda pressured me to get in the rotation (paid of course) and nothing would convince me to wake up 3AM in the morning or have it in the back of my head while being out and about. I simply said I value my work/life balance and I'm not willing to take it. It didn't affect my promotion that came few months after.

An alternative to an off-shift on-call rotation is to have 24h staffing (divided shifts at a single rotation, or geographically distributed workforce), with alert responses handled by on-duty personnel. There's still the obligation for situation response, but not the long, slow, sanity-robbing hypervigelance of 24h alertness obligations in all life activities.

Proofing systems against faults, drilling for specific responses, and looping in SWEs (such as yourself) to take on support obligations for their own stack, architeccture, build, and deploy decisions are also strongly recommended faault-proofing and response-expediting measures.

I removed myself from pagerduty about 10 months ago. I'm not sure the management noticed yet.

This is an immature thing to do. It also moves others' shifts around in the future which may schedule them on pre-booked holidays. (If you use automatic rotation in PD) Don't be that person. Tell people openly.

I remember telling a few co-workers. One wasn't excited about being on duty sooner than expected without being noticed long in advance. I understand why it can be annoying. I had good reasons to remove myself from pagerduty.

You say that your time is worth more than the money, but perhaps there is a point where that would be no longer true. If the on-call incident bonus was $200/hr with a $400 minimum that would do it for me (your numbers may be different).

This also incentivizes the company not to mess around with on call for dumb problems. A user is locked out at 3am? Not a $400 problem. The server goes down at 3am? That is a $400 problem.

If you really want to stick to your guns with time over money, then make the on-call bonus a time-in-lieu situation. For every hour worked on-call you get half a day of time off.

Of course, you can always just stick to your guns. "Part of the reason I chose this job is that I don't have to do on-call duties. It is a company policy that it is voluntary. Changing that policy materially changes the terms of my employment in a way that matters very much to me." That last sentence is written in a way that will make HR people nervous without being impolite.

Any manager, or HR person can read right between the lines of that, which is essentially: "Try me. Best case is a renegotiation of my contract. Worst case is that I jump ship to any of the unlimited competitors that will give me what I want."

Price yourself higher than everyone else on the list, but not excessively so. Make sure you're their last option. The equivalent of asking a VP to do clerical work.

Depending on circumstances, you might never be assigned call at all, while still checking the box on your performance review.

And/or

Since you value time more than pay, demand a multiplier, but paid in comp time.

So that instead of working more hours, you end up working fewer.

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager : We need to talk about your flair.

Joanna : Really? I... I have fifteen pieces on. I, also...

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager : Well, okay. Fifteen is the minimum, okay?

Joanna : Okay.

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager : Now, you know it's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum. Or... well, like Brian, for example, has thirty seven pieces of flair, okay. And a terrific smile.

Joanna : Okay. So you... you want me to wear more?

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager : Look. Joanna.

Joanna : Yeah.

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager : People can get a cheeseburger anywhere, okay? They come to Chotchkie's for the atmosphere and the attitude. Okay? That's what the flair's about. It's about fun.

Joanna : Yeah. Okay. So more then, yeah?

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager : Look, we want you to express yourself, okay? Now if you feel that the bare minimum is enough, then okay. But some people choose to wear more and we encourage that, okay? You do want to express yourself, don't you?

Joanna : Yeah, yeah.

Stan, Chotchkie's Manager : Okay. Great. Great. That's all I ask.

Fantastic analogy. I hate when a job pulls this "not mandatory, but actually...". It's a round about way to pressure people without taking heat for a mandatory policy.

it is paid, but I value more my time than my money

I venture to say that, if they paid you a billion dollars per hour, you would bend your own rules a little. In a case like that, I would do nothing else but be on-call for a few months, then live a life of luxurious leisure for the rest of my life.

The thing then is to price your time so that it is out-of-reach for the company. If you can't manage to do that, you have two options: (A) knuckle-under and do the on-call. (B) leave the company.

The other route is to take the oncall shifts and make the platform so reliable that it's basically an insurance premium you collect. I've done this at other companies and over a year or two is actually doable especially if you get the team onboard--who doesn't want fewer pages or monitoring noise in Slack.

It's not only the time/money but first-hand exposure to system issues.

If you are a full or part-time single parent, you are unavailable. Or you might be climbing or hiking in mountains, padding a river...

If you have to be called at 3am (and it's happened to me more than once), the workday is completed when the problem is fixed.

A smart employer does not want you to come in during the normal workday and doing something stupid, or get in an accident driving.

If you are average at your job and everyone knows it, then sure you could have trouble due to this even if not mandatory. If you are an A player, may be not. Your salary increment should not only be tied to that one thing BUT if you are worried about it, most likely it is a factor.

Wherever you work sounds like there's a lack of leadership and it's a dog-eat-dog situation. The better question is... why is everyone on call getting paged so much? Good software has the qualities of being simple and handling failure modes predictably.

You can say the only reason you can be efficient at work is you don't think about it when you're home. We're all different, we have different needs, no one can demand you change how you're wired ;)

Steer the conversation to your strengths and accomplishments. Sure, refusing on-call is a reason not to raise your salary, but what are the reasons that you are valuable to them?

Tell them how much you value your time. Give them a rate you'll be happy to be on-call and they wouldn't.

Say "Yes, but it's worth $xyz to me. Otherwise I'm not doing it."

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