[munchbunny]

I agree on the preference that if it's not really optional, just don't make it optional.

On-call also varies a ton between companies. I was technically on-call all of the time in my last job, but it was a low throughput system. I had to be up at odd hours maybe once every 2-3 months. I slept pretty well. If you offered me free meals for the week, I wouldn't mind taking my turn on the watch regularly.

This job, I'm on call maybe one week every two months on a high throughput system, and even though it's only half of the day (we have an overseas team to take the night shift), it's generally acknowledged in the team that your sleep takes a hit and you get no real work done that week. If this were an optional part of my job, you'd have to pay me double for the week (basically a 10% raise).

[devuo]

evidently the pay must be adjusted to how painful the on call experience is.

as I said it is optional, no harm comes to you for not participating, and we have people with very good reasons for not helping the team support the code they themselves built and deployed themselves to production.