Those of you on call for IT jobs, how goes it?

[utahraptor]

I have to be on call only once a month ago, although until recently it was 1/3 of each month. If I am call and a customer calls for support, I have to answer it within 15 minutes and I get a bonus of $50-75 depending on how long the call lasts. This is in addition to my salary.

Is anyone else in a similar position?

 

[saratoga172]

Similar bit different. I get no bonus. I'm salary and most of my on call consists of being escalation. I'm basically on call 24/7 even when my guys are covering on call. Of an outage occurs or a server issue I'm always engaged. I've taken that over from my boss.

When one of the other guys are out on vacation or such I cover on call for them too. This means answering calls on Saturday or Sunday. Don't have a hard fast respond within 15 minutes because I may be on another call but just need to be available.

The on call aspect I really don't mind because I can walk the other guys through issues without have to be logged in. If I need to get engaged and logged in its usually a critical system down issues: Exchange, Doman Controller, JDE, firewall etc.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I have to be on call only once a month ago, although until recently it was 1/3 of each month. If I am call and a customer calls for support, I have to answer it within 15 minutes and I get a bonus of $50-75 depending on how long the call lasts. This is in addition to my salary.

Is anyone else in a similar position?

Only phone support? No on-site service?

Piece of cake.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm technically always on call but it's just a rotation, if I don't answer they try someone else. If no one answers then they just keep trying later. I work in the NOC and not IT though, so typically if I get a call it's to go check a CO somewhere (open door alarm etc) or if it's too busy and they need a hand.

When I was in IT it was the same system but I got called a bit more often.

Basically if I act on a call it's 4 hours minimum that I get paid for. Typically a call out wont last long unless it's to go do overtime then I get paid after 4 hours.

It's a pretty nice system as I don't have to feel tied to my phone all the time but if I do take a call the pay out is decent. When I was in IT since I was 1 of 2 server guys for the hospital I'd try to always be ready though as it was a bit more critical given we were only 2.

 

[NoTine42]

Currently I am in a rotation that only has 4 weeks a year (1 weeknincludes a holiday)

The calls typically take an extra 7-20 hours of work that week, (1-6 calls/day)..and that's with our team in India taking calls the other half of the day. The extra work is all part of my salary.

My previous team was smaller, so I had 13 rotations/year but there were very few calls (0-3/week)

 

[Brovane]

On-call for Windows Servers and Storage Systems. I am on a 3-week rotation where I am on-call for 1-week and then off for 2-weeks. I get stand-by pay while on-call and for call-outs it is a 3-hour minimum. Very rarely get call outs since or systems are fairly stable. If we get called out we are supposed to respond within 30 minutes.

 

[bbhaag]

I don't work in IT but I can relate. I'm on call on my days off and on my vacations. Most of the time it's over the phone to help answer customer questions but occasionally I have to go in. I'm salary so I don't get any bonuses. Honestly it kind of sucks.

 

[nageov3t]

Similar bit different. I get no bonus. I'm salary and most of my on call consists of being escalation. I'm basically on call 24/7 even when my guys are covering on call. Of an outage occurs or a server issue I'm always engaged. I've taken that over from my boss.

same here... I'm one of 3 senior-level techs in my department (and unfortunately the only one who's really proficient with our oldest programs).

we're staffed with level-1 support guys 24/7/365, but I'm on-call at any hour if there's a critical issue that needs to be escalated (75% of the time, I can at least walk them through whatever).

I'm overtime-eligible, but if a call can be resolved in under an hour, I won't bother filling out the paperwork (if anything, I'll just show up an hour late the following day). and my company pays for my cellphone bill.

 

[MrCassdin]

I'm on call, have been for years (with every company I've worked for). At this point it's normal, but I can't say I like it. Current place was paying decent for a while ($250/day standby if you get called or not and billed hours on top if you do get called). They recently cut this back to just billed hours basically, which I'm not too happy about.

 

[ImpulsE69]

The job I had before the one I have now, I was on call 24/7 covering a 4 state area. It was only for onsite breakfix, and I worked MAYBE 3 hours average a month (not counting drive time) and it was salary. It was awesome. The only real catch was I just needed to be available at any moment to go somewhere. Once I drove 10 hours, was on site working 15 minutes, then drove 10 hours back (and was paid $1k in mileage).

For the last 3 years or so different company and I have on call 1 week out of every 4 covering equipment for about 250,000 users around the globe. It has gotten better in that in the last 8 months they have added an overseas crew that takes over at 8pm to 8am. Before that there were times where we'd never be off the phone with production issues or doing disaster recovery testing an entire weekend. It's salary so obviously any extra hours I don't see anything for, but I was very aware of how their on calls went prior to taking the job (I was a consultant for them for a couple years) and negotiated my salary based on that knowledge. They are looking at adding a couple US people so that would move it to every 6 weeks, but even though we sorely need the extra people just for the day to day workload that has gotten out of hand, I doubt it will happen.

 

[Mide]

If you work infrastructure you're always on call and always on salary. No extra money. You have to fix the problem fast or else all the uppers will know x doesn't work because you didn't get your ass into work.

 

[MustISO]

Used to have to deal with on-call, was only two weeks at a time but several times per year plus anytime someone decided they needed me. New job, we just work normal business hours. Server goes down it's best effort until morning, nothing critical.

 

[Sattern]

I normally just get straight pay once I complete the job.

I'd much rather have that than a small salary and less of a commission than I get now.

 

[trmiv]

I'm on call on rotation for a week at a time. Usually four or five times a year. We get 8 hours of extra pay for on call. In addition to being available for tier 2/3 server issues we have to check backups during our on call week.

 

[Brovane]

I don't work in IT but I can relate. I'm on call on my days off and on my vacations. Most of the time it's over the phone to help answer customer questions but occasionally I have to go in. I'm salary so I don't get any bonuses. Honestly it kind of sucks.

That sucks that you are on-call all the time. When I have a vacation day you are not on-call. Or company even has a policy that you cannot take vacation time if you are on-call that day.

 

[nageov3t]

That sucks that you are on-call all the time. When I have a vacation day you are not on-call. Or company even has a policy that you cannot take vacation time if you are on-call that day.

I've gotten into the habit of telling my coworkers that I'm going to Canada to visit family any time I take vacation... since the company won't pay for international charges unless you're out of the country for work-related reasons, I tell them I can try to check my email in the mornings but otherwise don't count on being able to reach me.

 

[vi edit]

I'm on call every third week. Support a couple critical clinical application systems for a hospital. I get a paycheck for my reimbursement. AKA dickall for call pay. This week has been particularly brutal. I've put in about 15 hours worth of oncall extra time in this week alone on top of my normal 40. Plus I'm expected to be on an 8AM operations call to report out high impact tickets I got called on. No rest for the wicked.

It sucks. Badly. At best I get some comp time to flex out the next week I'm off but no way I'm going to make up on that lost time or the fact that every three weeks I'm basically shackled to my house after hours. If I seek out another gig it's because of the fucking call rotation.

I've done this for 10 years and it's hands down the absolute worst rotation I've been on.

 

[brianmanahan]

on call SUCKED at my old job

i was on 1 week out of every 4, and supported a production app 24/7 while also doing new development for that app. some weeks were not bad, but other weeks required 20+ hours of production support in addition to 40 hours of regular work.

 

[Brovane]

I've gotten into the habit of telling my coworkers that I'm going to Canada to visit family any time I take vacation... since the company won't pay for international charges unless you're out of the country for work-related reasons, I tell them I can try to check my email in the mornings but otherwise don't count on being able to reach me.

That works, I am out of the country. :whiste:

For me my Work Cell phone just gets turned off and left at home. My boss is the only person that has my personal cell phone number and in over 10-years of working with him he has called it twice when I wasn't on-call and he needed my help with something.

 

[Rage187]

I just left a job that required me to be on call for the last 6.5 of 8 years I was there.

First couple if years, I got $200 no tax for each week.

Then it went down to $100

Then it got rolled into my paycheck and I got $60 after taxes.

It was 24/7 and I was the only one who took the phone. I do not miss it. However, last night the new guy called me to help with something he was stuck on.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

At past jobs, I was always on call and would get calls from Europe and Asia at 2 AM or 3 AM on some days. It was rare though and I never got a bonus.

 

[crownjules]

I'm on call once every 5 weeks and it's just built into my salary. Most weeks it's only an extra 3-4 hours of work but it can sometimes get up to 10 if they're more serious issues.

 

[pontifex]

I'm going to have to do on call soon and it will last until we get more workers.

I'm told we will get extra pay for being on call, plus extra pay on top of that if we actually have to do any work. i don't know how much yet though.

 

[child of wonder]

Used to be on call with previous jobs. First place gave me a bonus for it, but no other employers did.

One job even expected us to answer the phone if we weren't on call. My boss' boss would randomly call us late in the evening just to be sure we'd answer. That job was hell.

Now I've been a consultant since 2010 and haven't been on call since. It is glorious.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm thankful for being in a union, seems lot of you are on call with very little to no compensation.