For actual work, not for being on call with the expectation that most of the time nothing will go wrong
No, it requires that you be able to stop whatever it is you're doing and be working on a problem within some latency tolerance (5m and 20m are cited upthread, for example). For most modern datacenter workloads, that can be as simple as "carry your laptop and stay within reliable coverage". While sure, that rules out a lot of activites, most of our lives are spent in that regime already.
There are plenty of things I do in my own time that can be interrupted: books, movies, HN, housework, etcetera.
Software developers aren't special, were not even operations staff. Just build stuff that fails gracefully and deal with it on Monday.
And be sober, and somewhere quiet enough you'll reliably hear/feel the notification, and be somewhere you can get that laptop out and type away at it for a while.
I get _much_ less enjoyment from many social activities when I'm on call. I enjoy gigs way less. I enjoy parties way less. I pretty much wont go to movies. I hate being "on call" while out at dinner with friends. I will not go on a date while on call (at least not with somebody I don't know well enough for them to understand the on call obligations).
> most of our lives are spent in that regime already
But not all hours in my life are of equal "value" to me. A lot of the "most valuable and enjoyable times" get disproportionally affected by being on call. I care way less about potentially being paged at 2:30am on a Tuesday morning than I do about having to curtail social events on a Friday evening or a weekend. You _will_ need to pay me handsomely to do that, and guarantee it only rarely becomes my responsibility. Been there, done that, am perfectly happy to turn down job offers that don't understand that (or to walk away from companies who try and spring that on me later I've accepted).
Technically this is not a requirement. I've definitely known people going oncall while tipsy or at the pub, as long as you're not shitfaced drunk and physically unable to answer the page. Not that it's something I'd ever do or recommend doing, but it's technically not forbidden.
Every time I was oncall during weekends or holidays (or outside work hours) it was just a normal day with the occasional "phone call". As long as I had my laptop with me and I had some kind of network coverage (which I did unless I went trekking in the non-existing mountains of Ireland, which I didn't during oncall days) it was fine.
My coworkers in search or ads were a bit more stressed out on that though, I agree, having to ask their secondary to cover just for the 5-10 minutes they wanted to take a shower because they could not miss a single alert, but for us on a secondary service that was not a problem. I've had days where I commuted by train (40 minutes ride) with spotty internet and 0 problems because having a 15-30 minutes response time meant that I had enough buffer to get off the train and find some place with wifi with plenty of time to spare.
> I definitely consider every hour of the day I'm on call (all 24 of them) as a working hour
You'd be incorrect. We also don't do 24 hours shifts.
And not every tech company has Google's on-call policy. The company I work for has team-defined shifts, generally these are one or two week rotations where the person on call is on call 24/7 during their rotation.
"being available" is not in any definition of labor I've ever read. Reading a piece of fiction on my couch is not labor under any reasonable definition, because I am not working.
Like if the trade off is Google's policy (2/3 time but freedom) or time and a half but you have to actually work the full weekend and you're expected to write code when not responding to incidents, which do you pick?
If you're a firefighter, is it labor to be at the station playing cards, just because there aren't any calls coming in right now? If you're an ER physician, is it not labor to be waiting for patients on a quiet night?
> Reading a piece of fiction on my couch is not labor under any reasonable definition, because I am not working.
If it's a Saturday and being on-call is preventing you from buying groceries or going to the movies, then being on your couch reading a piece of fiction is labor. If it's the Fourth of July and being on-call is preventing you from having a beer at the barbecue, then that's labor.
"Labor" isn't just the activities for which you are actively producing value for somebody else. Labor is any time your allowed options are restricted as a result of your employer's decisions. Sometimes, those restrictions dictate only a single option of being on-site working on a specific task. Sometimes, those restrictions allow multiple options have some flexibility to them, but the existence of those restrictions at all means that it is still labor being required of you.
Like I said, this is an abnormal definition of labor. It would mean, for example, that I am laboring 24/7, because there are some thing that my employment agreement does not allow me to ever do.
If you'd like to work under that definition of labor, that's fine, but then you cannot square it with an hourly-wage based definition of compensation for labor, so "time and a half for additional hour beyond 40" makes no sense in such a context.
I fully support people being compensated for such inconvenience. I don't think it makes sense to expect a greater-than-normal-work-time compensation for a lesser-than-normal-work-time inconvenience.
The relative difference may very well not exist between the two scenarios. If I can't just go to the beach with my wife, if I can't go walk the dog in the farther-away park, if I can't play an online game that lasts over 40 minutes per match, if I can't schedule a music lesson - then if the above is my definition of free time, then it's going to be difficult to convince me that there's a difference between "you can't do this because you're working" and "you can't do this because you're on-call". All it takes is that I take "can't do it" seriously enough.
If your typical day-off is filled with "short" activities, if you being on-call doesn't affect plans of other people close to you, if you plan your month so that you do all the housework & chores on your on-call days, then you'll probably be OK and will testify to the huge difference between the two.
The perception of this difference will thus vary from person to person, from circumstances to circumstances, from lifestyle to lifestyle.
But there *is* a difference, and that difference is exactly why you're paid 2/3 of your normal rate instead of 100% (or 150% as some people are saying). You aren't working, but you aren't entirely free either, so you are compensated for that by being paid something that is not quite your full rate. *OR* (at least by Google guidelines) you can accrue enough time to be able to fully take a day off later to make up for that time lost.
By the way depending on the day, requirements, oncall shift, style, etc you can definitely relax, play games, go to the beach, etc. Just because you are oncall it doesn't mean you can't categorically do any of those activities (unlike if you were *actually* working), it just means that you need to have a laptop nearby with internet access and temporarily drop whatever you are doing to be able to deal with an outage if it happens. For this reason, the company pays you, but it's not a full rate.
At some point I also romaticized the idea of being on the beach enjoying myself when the pager goes off. So I jump into a terminal, get the adrenaline rush, fix the problem, save the day, and carry on. That narrative just doesn't work for me anymore.
Hiking? Nope. Driving through dead zones? Nope. Going to the movies? Not really. Bike riding? Maybe, if you can hear your phone, haul around a heavy laptop, and stick to areas with phone reception.
Being on call is work. Call it labor or don’t, I don’t care about the semantics. Work is work.
Or do you, maybe, get paid a general smoothened out curve based on the average for your work expectations over a certain period of time?
You get bonuses, raises, promotions based on how well you perform your job as your salary gets adjusted (ideally at least) according to that (+ end of year bonuses, stock/options, etc). This all also contributes to your total compensation including oncall (which is based on your normal work rates).
Usually how it worked in my team at least, if someone had a tougher-than-usual shift (lots of alerts, large scale incidents, etc) we'd get some extra "rest time" (unofficially) or we'd be told to just take some time off in lieu, etc (on top of your oncall pay already) at discretion of your manager. On the other hand if your team's oncall stats (pager alerts, SLOs metrics, etc) were bad over a long period of time with a lowering trend, you'd have to restructure the way you approach/monitor your system and deal with releases and change management practices because something clearly isn't working. This is all encoded in the principles[0] of what it means to be a good SRE and design good systems and is already taken in consideration as part of your stipend.
you know what this sounds like, a wonderful opportunity to exercise some privilege at the managers discretion.
Same as when I’m stuck on a bit of code and I’m looking through the window or taking a walk to think the problem through: I’m working and get paid for it.
Why should being on call and it’s mental + physical (being sober, within arm reach of your computer) burdens be any different?
Correct
> you’re working.
Incorrect
Regardless, people *are* getting paid for their oncall availability. Just not at a full rate (or 150% which would be even larger).
On-call #1. Averaged one page every week or two. Pages typically resulted from a failed automated process, which was scheduled to avoid running in the wee hours of the night. Most pages could be handled remotely, in about 10-15 minutes. For issues that required going in, even if the root cause couldn't be determined, the system could be brought to a safe state with further troubleshooting done the next day. If there was an overnight issue, you were not expected in until the afternoon, and supervisors would actively tell you to go home and sleep if you were there in the morning.
On-call #2. Averaged 3-5 pages per day. Pages occurred at random times during the day or night, with little to no predictability. All pages could be handled remotely, but typically took 1-3 hours to resolve. Issues frequently required creative problem solving, which was expected regardless of time of day. If there was an overnight issue, you were still expected to be on-site for the daily 7:30 AM meeting.
There was a drastic different in quality of life between the two on-calls. The first was as you say, an on call with the expectation that most of the time nothing will go wrong. The second would be more accurately described as a "working nights and weekends rotation", rather than an "on call rotation"
A 5 minute response time means to respond to the call out and start working on it. If you're on call, you should have a suitable WFH setup and it should be on standby, so 5 minutes is ample time. It doesn't means you have to have it resolved within 5 minutes of being called out, that would be absurd.
Empirically, it's more likely my internet connection gets overloaded and dies on a Friday night than I get paged.
However, according to recent ECJ decisions[1][2][3], "Standby Duty" is not reserved exclusively for when the employee is required to remain on-premises, and it also depends on the degree to which the freedom of the employee is curtailed, specifically stating in one ruling[2]:
> ...
> 32 In the third place, and as regards more specifically periods of stand-by time, it is apparent from the case-law of the Court that a period during which no actual activity is carried out by the worker for the benefit of his or her employer does not necessarily constitute a ‘rest period’ for the application of Directive 2003/88.
> ...
> 36 Second, the Court has held that a period of stand-by time according to a stand-by system must also be classified, in its entirety, as ‘working time’ within the meaning of Directive 2003/88, even if a worker is not required to remain at his or her workplace, where, having regard to the impact, which is objective and very significant, that the constraints imposed on the worker have on the latter’s opportunities to pursue his or her personal and social interests, it differs from a period during which a worker is required simply to be at his or her employer’s disposal inasmuch as it must be possible for the employer to contact him or her (see, to that effect, judgment of 21 February 2018, Matzak, C‑518/15, EU:C:2018:82, paragraphs 63 to 66).
And while I'm very definitely not a lawyer, I think it's possible (likely, even) that having to be at a computer and working within 5 minutes of a page, even at 3AM, would constitute significant constraints on the worker and turn it from "On Call" to "Standby Duty", although the exact implications of that will vary from country to country.
All of that to say that I think that 5 minutes is absolutely bonkers as an expected response time. If I were subject to that, I wouldn't be able to leave my apartment for the duration I was on call - it takes me a lot more than 5 minutes to get to and from the supermarket or even the coffee place just outside. Even taking out the trash could take > 5 minutes (and with no cell reception, due to being underground).
[1] https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2021/03/flash-alert-20...
[2] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsession...
[3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
[4] (WARNING: auto-download PDF) https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=6474&langId=en
That pretty much implies you cannot leave your home while on call.
I've never _quite_ had that demanding an on call requirement. For me the only "5 min response time" requirement has been to acknowledge the notification (mostly so it doesn't get sent to the escalation on call staff), and the requirement to be "on tools" has never been shorter than 30mins. That means I can at least head to a nearby cafe for breakfast, or go do some grocery shopping, or even head out for lunch somewhere nearby with friends. I meant I couldn't do things like go to movies or concerts or events more than 20-ish minutes from home (unless they were events I could reasonably take a laptop to and assume there'd be somewhere quiet for me to disappear to for as long as it took.)
This is why we have secondaries. If you need to leave your house and expect to not have internet access, you inform your secondary oncaller to cover for you for the time you're not available. You need to go to the store? You need to take a shower? You need to pick up your kid from school? You want to have a lunch break with friends? You want to go for a walk to mentally recover? You ping your secondary and ask them to cover you. That's literally what they are there for.
Secondaries are not your primaries. Secondaries are not supposed to be sitting there waiting for your call to cover them. That's not how escalation works.
Your secondary is someone who's not oncall but is available in case you need help or you become unable to acknowledge pages for a limited amount of time. You get into a car accident? You have a fever? You find yourself in a family emergency? Your secondary should be available to take over (it's not an escalation). I would regularly organize my commute time in the morning with my secondary because I'd have spotty internet (although later on we stopped doing that because my oncall response time was long enough for it to not be a problem), I'd tell them "hey I'll be unavailable between 9:30 and 10:00 am, can you cover me?" and they'd turn on their pager and take over the oncall duties while I commuted.
For people with stricter oncall response times (like google ads or google search SRE), you'd often communicate/coordinate with your secondary for everyday things like "going to the store" or "taking a shower". My friends in search-sre would just tell their secondary "Hey I'm planning to take a shower, can you cover me?" and they'd turn on their pager.
Maybe other companies do it differently, but that's how Google does it.
Most of us work at places that don a lot of things differently to Google I suspect.
There's a _huge_ difference between how on-call works in a dozen or so person startup, and hundred or two person single timezone business, and a thousands of engineers across almost all timezones.
I _dream_ of working at a place that has follow-the-sun teams of SDEs and SRDs across 3 or 4 timezones. I have not yet worked at a place large enough to have on call secondaries, I've only worked places where the only on call escalation is that the on call person's manager gets paged (and angry) if the on call person hasn't responded within the SLA. (And I've been both the on call person and the manager in that scenario in several different organisations...)
If it is important for the application to be up 24/7, the company needs to pay for it at the usual rate!
I’m not expected to “pull” responsibilities from a chat room; pages are pushed to me. If someone needs to get ahold of me they are supposed to page me, not message me.
Edit: that being said, oncall outside of business hours does limit my activities, such as hiking, biking, camping, traveling, and I would of course appreciate 100% time or time and a half.
I have many friends "in the trades." These are usually unionized, and the compensation can be jaw-dropping. Many of my friends deliberately try to get overtime, which can include "on-call."
But the work can be tough, and the salaries -although good- are usually less than most SWEs.
Useless expectation as it still steals your freedom.