[sokoloff]

One argument is that you are being paid for it; it’s just not broken out into two lines, but the dollars are there.

If you’re making $200K/yr, maybe $150K of that is for your job and $50K is for being on-call. That seems like a more than fair price (or at least one that’s in the ballpark) for periodic on-call service.

[kelnos]

In my experience, often people paid more end up not having on-call duties. I know several people who have negotiated high salaries from the start of their employment along with a stipulation that they will never be on the on-call rotation.

In my own situation, I removed myself from on-call duties during a leave of absence, and never went back on after I returned to work. Since then, I've still gotten the same raises I got before.

[lumost]

An unfortunate reality of on call is that companies care about projects delivered, not disasters averted.

Unless your stepping in to right the ship when a company is on fire operationally, and can point to specific action/results you delivered to right the ship - getting pages 8x per week does nothing for your career.

[redisman]

If that was the case we could easily see it in the salaries of on-call versus not on-call positions. This is clearly not the case.

[shados]

That's mostly because our industry is a bit of a mess. We clearly have different people doing completely different roles that are in the same career ladder with the same title. Forget on call, some folks with the same titles and same salaries often do easier or harder jobs. That's a separate problem.

Salaries in the industry have a lot of expectations baked in, like the expectations of being able to learn and train yourself without the company having to pay for it (aside the occasional paid book). Being on call is another. That some folks can get the same pay regardless of their responsibilities or how hard their job actually is is, indeed, a problem.