On-Call makes me want to quit "I.T."

jibbajabba

Had a rough week(end) and it makes me realise how old I am. I am in this business for almost 10 years now and it gets harder and harder. Makes me want to have a normal job, or even a job with shifts. Being busy on a graveyard shift def. beats a night of on-call. I must have gotten several calls between 1-4am every single day and all weekend. Feeling like a robot right now and ready to quit the whole thing ..

Zzzz......

the_Grinch

I was lucky in the fact that I only had to work for one company that had on-call and when I arrived they stopped having NOC/Helpdesk do it. So though I've never done it, I feel your pain after speaking to a bunch of engineers about it. They were really happy when I took over the night shift because I wouldn't call unless I really had to and even then I would wait till around 6 AM so that they wouldn't get killed earlier. Once I left though, the new guy has been killing them with calls for stupid things.

YuckTheFankees

I have heard the network engineers at my company complain and a lot of the NOC techs I work with would not accept a promotion to become a network engineer, based solely on not wanting to be on-call.

Pash

In all honesty "on call" is really only something that should be accepted if you are completely happy with the terms from your end. Even on a rotation it can become too much due to covering of staff off sick/annual leave and the like. I would never accept an on-call position unless I was getting something quiet extraordinary in terms of a package to compensate. In fact I probably wouldn't even then accept on-call, it just doesn't appeal to me on any level. Don't get me wrong, I sometimes take some work home with me, but its on my terms with thing that I am passionate about finishing up/presenting well. Trust me, this leaves a much healthier and happier mind!

If you are accepting on-call positions make sure you are ready to cover other staff rotas, make sure you are ready for accepting on call cases and make sure you don't regret your choice to accept such a position.

powerfool

I am on-call 24x7... I typically have been. It sure incentives me to make sure things are reliable.

It stinks when you are not the on-call person but are the SME for something (or everything) and the on-call person just fields the call and tries to pass it on. Kind of defeats the purpose.

In my current situation, we have some competent Ops folks. They do sometimes pass things on without even looking at them, which is certainly frustrating.

Hypntick

We do a rotation where I am, so it's generally 1 week every 2 months. Just depends on the luck of the draw on how bad it sucks. My last rotation I had 3 calls the entire week, and nothing later than 11 pm or earlier than 7 am. However a few back, I ended up being sick while on-call, I think over the course of that weekend, I had maybe 8 hours of sleep total. Being sick I had a hard enough time getting to sleep, by the time I would get to sleep the phone would ring every single time. At least I know what it'll feel like to be a zombie should that happen.

ptilsen

I will never accept another on-call position again unless one of the following criteria is met:
1. The pay is absolutely absurd
2. The on-call time is paid hourly (see #1)
3. Being on-call includes a generous stipend (see #1)

Basically, think about what you would like to make for a "standard" eight-to-five job. Divide it by 2000. Take that quotient and multiply it by the number of weeks you'll be on-call in a year times four.
Take S salary and W weeks of on call
4W(S / 2000)

That number is the minimum you should make for on-call, if not paid hourly. The number would rise if the average on-call is bad (more than four hours of work), but of course that's hard to determine before taking a position.

higherho

The only time I hate on-call is when I have to troubleshoot their own home network problems. I mean if your going to call me on a weekend when I'm relaxing and having fun, you better go over the basics of your own network prior to calling. After one weekend, I specifically made a "how to guide" on how to power cycle your home modems and perform basic connectivity tests. After I did this, I rarely got any phone calls.

swild

I am technically on call 24/7 for emergencies. Even through I have only had one emergency in the 15 months I have been here, I required me to work nearly 30 hours straight through with only candy bars and Mt Dew from the vending machine to sustain me. After that experience, I will not be taking another on-call position that pays less than $100 per hour.

cxzar20

I feel your pain, been there and done that. Not all on-call positions are created equal however. A lot of this depends on SLA and how critical your services are. My company has multiple tiers of engineers so the Tier III guys rarely get called unless it really hits the fan.

Trifidw

swild wrote: »

I am technically on call 24/7 for emergencies.

This is how it is at my place and no extra money for it (even if I have to come on site). I don't mind too much as any call is very rare and will only be escalated to myself after someone from 2nd line has confirmed it is a problem with our kit.

I wouldn't take oncall if it was a regular occurrence. I hate having my sleep disturbed by a ringing phone.