[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.