[toomuchtodo]

Looking at the job req, it mentions the expectation is for 5 minute response times when you're on call (from alert to being online) and that you're on call one week a month.

Is the compensation provided in line with essentially working 24 hours a day for a week once per month?

https://basecamp.workable.com/j/A5A189B311

"We have a shared on call responsibility which is about 1 week (5 week days, and 2 weekend days) a month. (The responsibility means you'll be online within 5 minutes of receiving an alert.) We constantly work on making the on call responsibility as calm as we can. We try to finish what we start vs leaving it for someone else to clean up. When there is a code red event (like a site outage), we all pitch in to help until we are sailing on calmer seas again."

[themcgruff]

(I run our Ops team.) The time burden goes down with the more people we have. It's still a burden though -- and our compensation (in theory) reflects that.

FWIW We're doing everything we can to make this "work hours only" M-F, which we could solve by hiring tons of people immediately, but we also have other ideals like keeping the company as small as possible that we want to realize too.

There's an open and ongoing discussion about making improvements in this area and I'm thankful that David and Jason have been receptive to many of the suggestions I, or anyone else on our team has had.

My personal stance is that we should do everything we can to give Ops a 40 hour work week that's during regular working hours and no more, even if that means people get cut a lot of extra slack to recover after a late night page, etc. (Hopefully our team would back me up in saying I encourage people to take reasonable time to make up "lost" hours.)

(Also fwiw, I participate equally in the on call rotations.)

[dsr_]

So you've got 6 people and want to have 8.

There's a big problem with being on call for one week out of 6 or 8: you lose touch with the procedures. Sure, your four year veterans know everything by heart - but the first few shifts of a newbie are going to be perilous. I recommend making the shifts shorter and more frequent.

Presumably one person is on-call and everyone else can be called in / woken up as necessary. So - split each day into two halves, and ask people to be on-call for a 12 hour period.

Rotate the roster around so that Jane doesn't always have the same Friday-afternoon shift, nobody has 2 shifts in a row, and put it in a shared calendar so you can always see who has the watch.

With 6 people, you'll take 2 and a seventh shifts per week. At 7, it's an even 2 shifts per week.

Benefits:

- much less of a burden that a whole week of readiness

- brains work better when they haven't been pummeled for a week at a time (at least, mine does)

- easily scales fairly when you have more people, or when someone leaves, but keeps everyone in the loop. When you have 14 people in Ops, you only have one shift a week, but you get one every week.

- much more family-friendly

OK, why 2 12 hour periods instead of splitting the day into 8, 6 or 4? Because people lose track too easily. Trying to schedule around your kid's concert or music lessons with smaller chunks is hard to keep in your head - and trying to work that in with a one week shift is nigh-impossible.

Why not a 24 hour shift? Because it's really hard to recover from that. Humans are generally awake for about 15-17 hours a day. Shifting a few hours is generally doable.

I would recommend that for anyone who took an alert call during non-core hours, you automatically expect them to take the next normal day to recover. I know that when I get woken up at 4AM, I'll run out of steam by 2 or 3PM.

[VLM]

How do you even, like, commute to work on a 5 minute online time? Even stuff like essential food shopping, I can sometimes be more than a 5 minute walk away from the car and laptop. Or going to the bathroom.

[amyjess]

> FWIW We're doing everything we can to make this "work hours only" M-F, which we could solve by hiring tons of people immediately, but we also have other ideals like keeping the company as small as possible that we want to realize too.

And this is what I can't stand about small businesses. Nothing makes me run from a company faster than a company saying they're committed to their ideals over what's best for everyone. Small businesses, for whatever reason, are the ones who are most likely to shout "Honor before reason!" and shoot themselves, their employees, and their customers in the foot. You don't see megacorps doing this.

What's best for everyone is to hire "tons of people immediately". If your ideals conflict with that, then you need to jettison your ideals.

[mediocrejoker]

I think 5 minutes is an ideal target, and not a hard and fast rule, right? Otherwise how could you even go to the bathroom?

[emperorcezar]

We rotate daily, except weekends, which has a single person. Works well for us.

[amyjess]

Wow, that sounds horribly oppressive. What that basically means is "For 1 week a month, you can forget about going to the movies, going out to eat, going shopping, or going anywhere where you're not within 5 minutes of a desktop computer. You can probably forget about cooking, too, unless you're willing to start a kitchen fire when you get an alert. Hope you like DoorDash!"

I would literally rather work the counter at Taco Bell than work in an environment like that.

Edit: And forget about going to the doctor, too. I can't wait for an employee to go to the doctor for a medical emergency, miss an alert, get fired, and then launch a spectacular lawsuit.

Y'know, the doctor's office around the corner from me actively bans cell phones past the waiting room. They have huge signs saying "NO CELL PHONES" at the back of the waiting room and in every exam room.

[mahyarm]

I don't work at basecamp, but in practice it's pressing the ack button on pager duty on my phone, looking at the alert metrics to see if it's something I should worry about immediately and if it is and I'm not available, I would go ask someone else to try to deal with it. Oncall is triage, you usually ping the person actually responsible for it.

And if I am surprisingly indisposed it would fall back to everyone else. If I need to go to the doctor, then I would swap times with someone else. No one has gotten fired for letting an alert through, just minorly teased the next day.

[mdekkers]

Edit: And forget about going to the doctor, too. I can't wait for an employee to go to the doctor for a medical emergency, miss an alert, get fired, and then launch a spectacular lawsuit.

Technically there is some merit in what you say. Taking the overall manual in context, I guess that notifying your team that you have to go for a medical emergency, or doing so after the fact, will make it a non-issue.

[adamlett]

Do you think employees at Taco Bell are payed the same, though?

[amyjess]

You literally couldn't pay me enough to work a job where I had to be on call an entire week every month. I mean it. You could offer me nine figures, and I'd still turn it down.

[adamlett]

Good for you.

[bbcbasic]

With young children this is a non starter.

[walshemj]

I think 5 mins is unrealistic 20-30 mins from the call to being logged on and working is more realistic and you are of course paid plus TOIL for this on call?

If anyone had an old school pager go of when you are deep asleep you will know that it can take 20 mins and a coffee just to be in the right state to work :-)