Are virtually all IT jobs on call?

Iristheangel

keenon wrote: »

the short is yes

Damn. I think they forgot to give me an oncall schedule when I started 2 years ago :P

TechGromit

PragmaticZealot wrote: »

If a call comes in with a complicated problem and I'm anywhere from tipsy to drunk-by-any-definition, do you think that's going to work? Lol I don't think so. If I decide to go hiking in a national park where there is ZERO internet service and poor/no phone service, how would that work if an call comes in? Or what if I'm at a beach 3 hours away from my house/workplace and I get a call asking me to physically come to the workplace? In a 24/7/365 IT job, those calls may come in only a few times a year, but they still dictate the parameters of your private life.

I think you misinterpreting the nature of being on call. Being on-call doesn't mean you have to be dressed for work, completely sober and sitting by the phone 24/7 just in case they call you. If you have a job like that, find a new job. Being on call means when it's your turn in the rotation you will be reachable and available in case they call you. In my case I also have to be sober, but it's only once every 2 months, so I can resist getting plastered for the week I'm on call. Being on call will have minimal impact to your life, you might have to schedule your hiking and beach trips around the weeks your on on-call duty. but face it most of the time you will be close to home anyway. Yes, there are IT jobs that are not on-call, but I believe they are not as common (unless the apex of your career dreams stop with help desk). The more flexible you are, the more opportunities you will find.

fullcrowmoon

When I was a UNIX/Linux Systems Administrator, I was on-call. We had about 11 people to rotate on-call, and the way they worked it was you'd be on-call primary for one week, and then the next week you'd be on-call secondary (in case the primary person got overwhelmed with broke stuff). However, since we supported multiple platforms and operating systems, there were also on-call lists for Redhat, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, etc., so that if the on-call person was dealing with a platform/OS that wasn't his or her forte, they could page everyone in the group who had that expertise.

End result - even when not on-call, I worked 60+ hour weeks. (We were extremely low on headcount given the number of production machines we were responsible for.)

After 11 years I finally left and moved into a NOC environment, which as someone has said already required working weekends at times, and covering swing and mids shifts at times, but I rarely had overtime and if I did have it, I got paid for it.