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This isn't all so unusual if its written into the job description. SREs in tech companies are expected to respond within a few minutes if they're paged in the middle of the night. They are usually compensated for their oncall time, however.

Expecting a worker to come to the factory out of fear or good will is not the way. Just write it into the contract/expectations/evaluations.

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Out of the major players, Google is the only one I know of that compensates SREs for oncall time (and they do so fairly generously).

All European tech companies I know compensate fairly well for oncall.

There's a rate for simply being on call (you'll get paid extra without even getting any calls), there's a rate that gets summed on top for actually working off hours and this rate increases depending on the time of the day you worked, whether it's the weekend or a holiday.

Yes, in Germany all months when you are expected to in the oncall rotation are basically an addendum to your usual contract that you sign and receive more money even if nothing ever happened during your shifts.

...and do machines really break as often as software in production? :)

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