Hacker News Reader

Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

On-call requires you to more or less not plan anything other than being available for work. Sure most of the time nothing goes wrong--but that isn't the constraint, here. The whole point is that something might go wrong and that the person on call must respond within a given window of time (5-15 minutes, generally). That effectively makes even mundane things like going to the grocery store a potential trade-off in favor of work. I definitely consider every hour of the day I'm on call (all 24 of them) as a working hour, and so should every other engineer. Since tech companies get away with not paying for this service, I take off from normal working hours at a rate of 1.5 times the time I spend resolving an on-call alert. I'd rather be compensated with cash for it.

View on HN

I was oncall for 3 years at Google on a tier 2 rotation for a service that had very mild alerts (we did have some very common ones but they were mostly just noise with almost 0 actionable thing to do).

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.

I wouldn't be incorrect: it's not even a matter of opinion. It literally is the definition of labor: being available to work on you employer's products and systems. This isn't debatable.

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.

This thread is about how Google's oncall policy is phenomenal. If you're complaining about other oncall policies, you're in the wrong place.

"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?

> "being available" is not in any definition of labor I've ever read.

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.

> "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.

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.

What do you mean by lesser-than-normal-work-time inconvenience? Congratulations if you don't feel the inconvenience of pausing everything waiting for a call. For me that's more inconvenient than predictable 9to5 duties.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to get your point across. 100% agree with you.

To clarify, do you mean that you would rather be required to work all day Saturday than to be oncall all day Saturday?

What's the difference?

Are you genuinely asking what is the difference between having to occasionally fix an outage/alert from the comfort of your house vs having to consistently sit *in the office* dealing with all kinds of non-urgent task like answering emails, reporting bugs, writing code, attending meetings, responding to chat pings, etc with the expectation that you will be doing that for the entire 9 to 5 duration of your shift before you are allowed to go back home to your family?

I believe that the difference IS obvious, but it's the "absolute" difference.

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.

>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"

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.

Now we are discussing subjectivities and it makes no sense continuing the discussion IMHO.

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.

It is literally... not... the definition of labor. Labor would be doing work on your employer's products and systems, not _being available to do so_.

It’s maybe not technically labor, but it’s definitely work to be inconvenienced. Last time I was on call, I had to change my lifestyle pretty significantly so that I could drag around a laptop and maintain internet connectivity.

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.

That's why you are being paid for it. Just not your full/standard/normal rate because you are not fully working. You're just available to work in case of emergencies.

does the rate go up to 1x when there is an issue, and you are then "fully working" ?

Does your salary normally go up in busy (non-overtime) periods during the day?

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.

[0] - https://sre.google/sre-book/part-II-principles/

> "rest time" (unofficially) ... at discretion of your manager.

you know what this sounds like, a wonderful opportunity to exercise some privilege at the managers discretion.

I only replied to the parent because they said that it was 'literally the definition of labor', which is absurd.

Look at it this way: if you’re on vacation but have to carry a pager, monitor it 24/7, and be able to respond in 5–15 min, are you really on vacation? No, you’re working.

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?

> are you really on vacation? No

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).

Funny how other countries' labor laws treat on call duty as overtime that's rewarded with time and a half pay or more, with bonuses, as well.

> On-call requires you to more or less not plan anything other than being available for work.

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.

The point is that for work you are required to be available to work at any given time during the shift, no different from being required to work during business hours in the office. It is work, period. Not free time. And it should be compensated accordingly (at least time and a half, when outside of normal business hours).

Do whatever you want that leaves you available to be interrupted is nothing like work during work hours and maybe steal a some minutes to do what you want.

There are plenty of things I do in my own time that can be interrupted: books, movies, HN, housework, etcetera.

If my boss tried to tell me I had to keep my phone on, carry it around everywhere, and carry a laptop around and couldn't leave cell range I'd ask how much he was paying me to do that and for a new contract that laid out my new time and a half rate.

Software developers aren't special, were not even operations staff. Just build stuff that fails gracefully and deal with it on Monday.

> that can be as simple as "carry your laptop and stay within reliable coverage"

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).

> And be sober

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.

What I don't get is why would you ever do regular 8-hour work for normal pay if you think it's an option to lounge around with a good book in your living room for 150 % the pay?

At Google (in my experience), the tier-1 teams are not on-call 24 hours a day, they are on either 12 or 8 hour shifts. Being on a 24-hour on-call is ridiculous because as you say, there's no way you can actually do that.

Checkout first responders on 24-48 shifts. Work for 24 hours, then off for 48. Being on-call for 24 is not ridiculous and is actually doable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com