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Comment by mkl95 | Hacker News Reader

I don't accept jobs that want me to be on call unless fuck you money is involved, and so far nobody has offered it to me. The product that drives most of my employer's revenue is a gigantic pile of tech debt, and there are some people on call whose lives are kind of miserable.

What some people struggle to realize is how easily the responsibility of an individual can scale at certain companies, without their compensation improving in the slightest. If you are working on-call and not making big bucks your company is likely milking you dry.

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> If you are working on-call and not making big bucks

Both of those are very relative. I've seen on-call which means daily events, and on-call which requires something once a year. There's a very different level of compensations I'd be happy with in each case.

I bill my hourly rate for all on-call hours regardless of if I'm called. If my employer wants any amount of control over my time (sobriety, proximity, etc) then they pay my regular hourly rate for it.

Most will not accept these terms, and that's the goal.

That's the way to go. On-call is bearable if you get paid for it. As a contractor who charged by the hour I was perfectly fine with sitting in useless meetings or fixing things at night that weren't even my fault. Doing this without extra compensation is just not OK.

And of course it should be that way: if they want your time (you not being able to do other jobs, you not being able to relax, etc) they should pay for it.

Forcing them to think in your hours can also have the nice side effect that they get their communications in order.

This is on point. I think the reason people do it without adequate pay is that some people like the feeling of being needed.

Actually it’s the inability to say a simple “no” in most cases.

> I don't accept jobs that want me to be on call unless fuck you money is involved, and so far nobody has offered it to me. The product that drives most of my employer's revenue is a gigantic pile of tech debt, and there are some people on call whose lives are kind of miserable.

Yeah this is the right answer. I know a lot of people who are earning more than I am in exchange for being on-call (or being de-facto on call, ahem) and it just ain't worth it.

What rates are typical for being on-call for a week? (my team has a rotating weekly roster, Australian team).

Australian Team, We get $20 per day (pre tax) oncall allowance, then time and 1/2 for any work done, time calculated to when you can go back to doing what you were previously. Generally works out to a minimum of 30 minutes overtime for any calls.

If you don't get 10 hours continuous break before the next work day, you fall into fatigue leave and either get paid overtime for the next days work or are stood down till you have had a 10 hr break.

Still doesn't stop our operations team being completely snowed with both workday and oncall work, but they can make a fairly good bonus wage out of it.

Your ops team might be at my old employer. Ops team had the above benefits but no one in SaaS Engineering (devs) got anything as second level support.

Yeah, we seem to contract second level support from the lowest bidder. Tick, we have a support contract, regardless of how dubious it's value.

$35 per day for me. 1.5x for the first 3 hours. 2.5x for every hour after.

Minimum call out fee of 2 hours regardless of the length of the call.

Also in Australia. This only started when I joined as an SRE.

Prior to that the Devs just said no it'll stay broken till we come back to work and that was largely acceptable. The on call rates only started as our reliability became more of a business need.

At my previous employer we got $4/hour for every hour on call outside normal business hours. So $64 per work day or $96 on a weekend or holiday or $512 for a typical week. Paid quarterly.

One of my reports pointed out that he made more from on call each year than the difference between an average and outstanding performance bonus. He wasn’t wrong.

We get a flat ~800$ for an on call week (Thursday to Thursday) and Friday is off. Nothing extra for working night, but you’re not expected to work a full day if you had an incident the night before.

In Finland the collective-agreement that covers IT work defines this. The way I've been paid has been the same across several companies:

You get paid 50% of your normal hourly salary for every hour you're "available".

You get paid 200% of your normal hourly salary for every hour you're working on an issue, incident, outage, or problem.

So being on-call is pretty lucrative, given that you'd usually do it for a seven day period. (i.e. 9am Monday to 9am the following Monday.)

what would you say is big bucks?

levels.fyi

Nice!

A surgeon friend of mine gets $1000 per day that he's not working but on-call.

And what does it go to if he gets called in?

I don’t know but it’s a hell of a lot more than anything I make.

FWIW the original definition of "fuck you money" was enough money to be able to say "fuck you" to anyone, which I conservatively estimate at a few billion, but most likely more than that.

It seems these days to just mean "multiple millions", which reduces the utility of the term.

A few millions are sufficient for you to be able to say "fuck you" to any employer or person you theoretically depend on, while still being able to live a comfortable live and - possibly - defend your right in court, even if it does not make economical sense to do so. That's what most people mean.

Having a few billion gives you some additional fuck you privileges - police officers, world leaders, other billionaires -, but you probably won't get on a level where you can say that to anyone and not fear repercussions. Also, if you can live happily on your own, you can already tell them that if you have a few million to your name.

In the US, for legal protection, I would say $10M is a good number based on legal costs I have seen. Maybe $5M works too, but I would say $5M protects you from healthcare costs and not being able to earn income due to health issues, but a little more is nice for paying lawyers if you are also not able to work at the same time.

There's always a bigger fish, but a few million is sufficient for almost every interaction most people will have in their lifetimes.

Unless you live in the US and get cancer.

This got downvoted, but I think is a legitimate concern. Having a terminal disease in the US can drain bank accounts quickly. It’s a real hazard that can destroy families / relationships.

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