Comment by t_sawyer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by t_sawyer | Hacker News Reader

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There a few very important things to consider if you’re being asked to be on call: 1. Expected response time 2. Number of times called on average 3. Average time spent working to fix a problem.

#1 and #2 are pretty obvious. These things actually eat into your life because you’re actually working.

#3 is hard to calculate how much that’s worth. If I’m required to be logged into vpn and starting to dig in within let’s say 10 minutes. That means I cannot reasonably leave my house to: eat dinner with my family, go to lowes to grab some pvc because the pipe for my sump pump started leaking, walk my dogs, take my kids outside to teach them how to ride a bike, etc.

I feel I should be compensated for having to be ready to go and not having the freedom to live my life. That in itself is an interruption.

Being on call is a burden, even if you’re not called in.

When my spouse was on call for a hospital, they had to sit with their phone in their lap when we went to the movies. I had to be prepared to Uber home because they’d need the car. It’s not fun!

The studies so far show that people are stressed a bit more when on call even when not likely to be called. I know for a fact that being on call can raise stress levels but I think there are many variables that should be considered to balance out things. For example, if pages are easily horizontally escalated to another team member (the “going to be unavailable while I watch a movie / have dinner” scenario) like I do oftentimes then stress probably drops significantly compared to the first responder having few ways to abdicate responsibilities temporarily.

Being on call for a hospital is absolutely a different experience IMO than being on-call for a software system. But at the least when it comes to healthcare having had several folks in my family tree being in healthcare in different functions it’s absolutely clear to me that a big reason for the US having a buckling healthcare system is lack of supply of doctors and nurses at the very least to cover each other and to provide better care per patient.

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