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by icedchai 1991 days ago
At a previous company, on-call was optional and we were compensated for that week when we were on call (an extra $500, IIRC.) About 50% of the team of 12 participated, meaning your week came up basically every month and a half. This seemed fair.

If your company doesn't want to pay for the aggravation, put your phone on silent, make sure alarms escalate to your manager, and start looking for another job.
2 comments
bigiain 1991 days ago
> If your company doesn't want to pay for the aggravation, put your phone on silent, make sure alarms escalate to your manager, and start looking for another job.

There was a story floating round a company I used to work at, where (well before my time there) a manager had dropped the "on call" phone onto the desk of a dev with no notice, who was just told "$otherguy just quit, so you're taking the rest of his on call week". Said dev was leaving for (pre arranged and booked/paid for) vacation the next day, so he just surreptitiously slipped the on call phone into the managers briefcase and left for the week...

Manager ranted for a few hours about getting woken up, until senior management heard about it and very publicly slapped them down for it.

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ymnska 1991 days ago
> At a previous company, on-call was optional and we were compensated for that week when we were on call (an extra $500, IIRC.) About 50% of the team of 12 participated, meaning your week came up basically every month and a half. This seemed fair.

That seems roughly fair to me too. Strangely, that's always how it worked at non-SV companies—of course you get compensated if there's considerable off-hours burden. For some reason though, SV seems to have established a new standard here. Maybe because people are often younger and/or already paid "too much".

> If your company doesn't want to pay for the aggravation, put your phone on silent, make sure alarms escalate to your manager, and start looking for another job.

Hah, well not ready to burn the bridge to this level quite yet, but yes, unfortunately that's the only option that's a guaranteed solution.

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