How many of you would go back to a job with on-call?

inverse_one

This is more of a poll, but how many of you would go back to a job with on-call (On-call would be one week every four weeks and you'd be 'tier 3' for infrastructure issues) because it fits more of the things you want to work on?

Background:  I tried SE (pre-sales) for a year from being a network security operations guy and find it's not something I enjoy even though I'm still pretty technical.  There isn't that much variety and I don't get to see the end deployment.  I don't have any on-call work, which is nice, but I like the feeling of ownership when in an ops/engineering role.  Some of the other roles I looked at have the things I like to work on plus cloud and with smaller companies (~1000 and below) it seems I would get more opportunities to shine in leadership (which appeals to me).

JDMurray

I'm a security operations manager and 24/7 on-call with my business cell phone glued to my hip is standard for the job. What's it like *not* to be on-call?

E Double U

I have been able to move up in my career while avoiding being on-call and I will continue to avoid it lol.

UnixGuy

I can't see myself doing it again! Did it for years as a unix support engineer and later and a network security analyst and then as a SOC analyst.

i can't do it anymore...

TechGromit

I'm on call once every 6 weeks, It's really not all that bad. Most of the time I don't get calls for the whole week I'm on call, but have had to go in at 4am to deal with issues in the past. It's all part of moving up and making a 6 figure salary. I agree being on call 24/7 all the time is not worth it for any amount of money in my opinion. 

JDMurray

TechGromit said:

I agree being on call 24/7 all the time is not worth it for any amount of money in my opinion. 

It depends on how often you get calls and how inconvenient they are. The 9AM-Sunday-morning-when-I'm-in-the-shower calls are definitely not welcome.

UnixGuy

TechGromit said:

It's all part of moving up and making a 6 figure salary.

I don't agree with this statement though. I did on calls for years and it's not a requirement for 6-figures salaries. People in Risk/Audit/Compliance never have to do it and a lot make 6-figures, so it's pathway but definitely not a requirement

E Double U

TechGromit said:

 It's all part of moving up and making a 6 figure salary. 

I don't agree.When I convert my salary from euros to USD I make six figures and was able to side-step on-call duties even while working in operations. I am currently an internal consultant and will move into a risk role next week without having to be bothered outside of normal business hours. Now have I ever been contacted at night or on a weekend by a colleague that needed urgent help - yes I have, but I was not required to do so. 

si20

I work on-call on a rota. I've done on-call in 2/5 jobs I've worked in. I don't mind it, but if my circumstances change e.g I found a partner, it's not something I'd really want to be doing. Money aside, it's just that you can't stray far away from your office because you could get called at any moment.

thepawofrizzon

I've been doing on call for most of the last 25 years, usually in a rotation every few weeks.  As long as the on-call is not non-stop and endless I'm fine taking my turn.  I don't love it, but most of the time it's not a huge issue.  

In my current Security role I've been on-call most every day, mostly to monitor queues and dashboards.  It's generally only an hour or so of work each day, and then dealing with alerts, but I'm willing to do it to get myself more security experience in the short-term.

DCD

This is the first company that I have be at with an on call. If I left I would come back even though it’s a 24x7x365. It’s just me and my boss, seniority has it’s perks. When I first got their I would get one or two call a week with some training and network clean up of this CCIE lab call have drop to 1 in the last nine months and it wasn’t even my call both APP’s team and Server teams where doing update and somebody wasn’t paying attention in Change Control. PS my wife hates that I’m on call and on vacation I shut off my phone and let my boss have fun.