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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> "the crud app you support fell over" is not an emergency.

I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed to learn that situations impacting business-critical operations would be considered emergencies.

The assumption that Australia just outlawed the concept of having an on-call rotation is not supported by the article.

The article says requiring an employee to be on-call 24/7 for general purposes would indeed be illegal.

There was another example that someone could not be required to come in for a surprise shift with only a few hours of notice overnight.

But completely eliminating planned on-call rotations is not part of the goal.

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> But completely eliminating planned on-call rotations is not part of the goal.

It certainly should be. You want your app supported 24x7 then pay for three shifts.

If the government won’t make it a law then IT workers can make it a demand when they unionize.

In Finland companies pay for on-call support time. That is you get extra pay to be available in 15 minutes or whatever timeframe agreed. And really that sort of commitment should not be free.

I used to have such an arrangement, but that was far more stressful.

I’m far happier with the “call me and If I’m able to I’ll answer” approach. I’ve had 2 call outs in 4 years, at a 4 hour cost a piece, both sorted with in 20 minutes.

By charging that 4 hour fee it means the person making the call has to justify it.

If I’m in an offical “on call” situation that limits me - can’t go to cinema, can’t go underground or on a plane, can’t got to the country, because I have a contractual agreement to be on call. Forget that.

This seems like a bit of an over-reaction. I do rostered 24/7 on-call 1 week a month. I get compensated for both being on-call, and if I get called.

To run 3 shifts would mean splitting our already smallish team into 3 cells that never worked at the same time. It would actually be cheaper for the org, assuming they could convince the current staff to do it. But it would be a terrible for the team, and for the individuals on the late shift (shift work is notoriously unhealthy).

> You want your app supported 24x7 then pay for three shifts.

24/7 is typically covered with 5 shifts (3 weekday and 2 weekend).

My first 24/7 role was

Mon Tue Fri Sat Sun Wed Thu on earlies

Then repeated on lates

Then a week of nights Monday through Sunday

Then a week off

I believe it’s changed now as they don’t like 7x12 hour night shifts in a row. Personally I preferred to deal with the “jet lag” once every 6 weeks and be done with it.

Those shifts tended to be fairly quiet with about 4-5 hours of breaks (unless something went really wrong)

You can staff a 24/7 shift with 5 people, but you really need 6 once you factor in holiday, illness, training etc.

Sounds like a great deal for the lucky 1/3 of developers who get assigned the day shift, but isn't it pretty rough for the majority? I'd much rather keep a normal schedule and get woken up every once in a while than work 5pm-1am or 1am-9am.

Luckily, employees in other parts of the world are in different time zones and their business hours can easily cover our off hours.

A lot of prod support can't be done remotely, for practical (need access to this physical environment) or security reasons.

In which case you need 24/7 shifts on site. If you can fix a problem remotely from your home then someone can do it in Sydney.

24/7 on-site is costly and counterproductive when issues are rare but high impact.

Someone in another country providing remote support doesn't work for a whole range of industries, particularly where security clearance is in play.

Even then, feels like.its easier and better for everyone if if instead of everyone needing multi-continental teams, you have one team, and if they get woken up and stupid o'clock to fix something, they get extra holiday or pay or something.

I know I like it like that. And I get that not everyone does! But IME, the out-of-hours rota is usually voluntary, so you can choose.

I'd actually be good with (and prefer) 5pm-1am. :)

> I'd much rather keep a normal schedule and get woken up every once in a while than work 5pm-1am or 1am-9am.

It would be in the contract you'd sign when you accept the job. It's not like your current workplace will suddenly change the policy and force you to work at night. The world is already full of places with night shift jobs, and you are not currently working at one of those places.

Why isn't it like that? If my company decided to follow a new rule that nobody can be oncall after hours, wouldn't they have to force at least 2 engineers from each oncall rotation into the new shifts? Even if I escape being one of those 2, shouldn't I expect to have 66% fewer day shift opportunities in the future?

Once again the lack of worker rights come into play here. Companies should never be able to change an employee's working hours like that. I'm guessing in the US they can, because they have almost no worker's rights. Where I live this would be illegal.

As for new opportunities, well, maybe? The theory would say these weird hour shifts would cost more and companies would have to think harder about their operations and decide if the extra cost really makes sense. Employees would also ask for more money to work under these hours.

I believe it would simply remove the inherent expectation that every tech product is guaranteed to be online 24/7 without any extra cost to the companies, only to the employees lives. That's a great outcome in my view.

Sure, but this is one of the things people are talking about when they worry a regulation might make companies less competitive. Online 24/7 is table stakes for any company that aspires to have a global presence - nobody in Europe or the US would buy Atlassian products if they were only guaranteed to be available during business hours in Sydney. If Australia successfully shifted the culture on this, Australian software would struggle heavily to find success on the global markets.

So what? If only companies could have slaves again to make them more competitive!

I'm absolutely fine if companies "become less competitive" because they can't exploit their employees as much.

Following this train thought would paint China's 996 policy as a great idea.

Tripling the cost of running a tech company in Australia is effectively outlawing startups.

If you can't afford to pay people to work for you, you do not have a viable business.

That’s right, we should continue to exploit workers instead because of vague contract terms that they “must work extra hours when required”. Workers should remember that the business is more important than their non contracted time.

The capitalism dream right?

the document starts with framing it applies to "non small business", so an early start up can still function with a small team of motivated volunteers outside hours, but beyond a certain size i agree with the sibling comments: if a late startup still relies on that to survive/grow, then its business model isn't working.

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