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

[ultimatebob]

When I worked for IBM, I used to get to claim 4 hours of OT for carrying a pager. I didn't get paid extra for it, but the company got to bill for it I usually only spent an hour or two a month online doing support calls, though.

I believe that they got sued for that practice at one point, as I got a lump sum check as the result of a class action lawsuit for unpaid overtime.

At my new company, I got $200 a week for carrying around a support phone. Someone else took over the phone, though, so I don't have to deal with that anymore.

 

[ultimatebob]

Dupe post... huh?

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

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.

Pretty much this, except for networking/phone systems.

I work in a team of 5 people but only 3 of us are in the rotation currently (one is a new guy and hasn't been added, the other is on call for another department that he used to be a part of and they haven't transitioned his responsibilities to a new person yet). We do 2 week shifts between us. It's hit or miss. Sometimes I have it for 2 weeks and nothing happens. Other times I have it and want to throw it against the wall, flush it down the toilet, go buy a gun so I can shoot it, or something else to completely destroy the fucking thing.

I'm salaried and nothing extra for on call work. If it's a rough on call the boss will let us come in late the next day, and he is good about giving comp time anyways. Still sucks though. And it really sucks that even when I don't have the on call phone I still am on call because I'm the highest level support for the network/phones internally and nobody else knows as much about our environment (and in some cases they know nothing about it and I'm the only one who does).

 

[Bateluer]

Been on call in a few different jobs.

When I was help desk, it was a team of 3. So 1 or 2 weeks out of the month, one of us carried the on call phone. And given that we supported work at home sales agents, we almost certainly got called repeated when on call. Salaried position, so no additional compensation.

At my current job as a datacenter tech, we have an oncall rotation, but the team is larger. New boss wants to use on call to cover vacations though, as well as putting us on 3x12hr shifts . . . we did this before with 3x9hr + 1x12hr and we had 5 to 6 full time techs worth of overtime being paid out. In those days, your yearly pay could almost double, if you were willing to work the massive overtime. With 3x12hrs and oncall for vaca coverage, I know of at least 6 people on a 24 person team that are getting ready to cut and run. Including myself.

 

[NoTine42]

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

I used to have a job where I would get 4 hours for being on call that week + hours worked.

I much prefer now getting a larger salary (than my old job + OT) with the potential of a bonus, too.

 

[Rage187]

I didn't mind having it added to my salary is 1. My merit raises were applied to the amount 2. I got to take that money with me to the new job.

 

[BikeJunkie]

Not really on call in the traditional sense, but I'm notified via the systems for which I'm responsible if there are any issues. Since I'm consulting, it's the standard hourly bill rate for fixes, releases, etc.

Not a bad deal, but I'm at that age where I'd much rather have the time over the money.

 

[Kaido]

I'm on-call 24/7. I'm hourly so it's just normal pay. I don't mind because the company treats us well - health insurance, monthly bbq's, etc. I accept it as part of the job of an IT guy. I really enjoy my job so even if I have to run in at midnight, it's not too bad because at least I'm doing something I like, you know? I've worked in landscaping, construction, culinary, etc. and it's so much nicer doing IT haha. No complaints!

 

[ViviTheMage]

salaried, get OT over 40 hours. it's a rotation amongst 5 of us.

 

[VoteQuimby]

Systems Engineer, we're always on call and take action if something major breaks. However we have a help desk/field support group that handles the on-call after hours support for end users.

Though we get text notifications from our systems and usually are working on the issue before the on-call tech contacts us.

 

[Exterous]

I used to work at a company with a world wide presence. Everyone was on call 24/7 although we tried to rotate it - not that anyone at the higher management levels ever paid attention. We had custom software so it was everyone from the DBA to the software developers all the way down to helpdesk. At times the time commitment was substantial 20+ hours in addition to the 40 (if that low) a week. Maybe you could come in an hour or two late to work maybe not. All of us were salaried. CIO was crazy demanding about response times. Our DBA got a talking to because it took him 20 minutes from getting the VM to wake up, start his laptop and start working on an issue that occurred at 2:30am. One of the many reasons I moved on.

Now I am still on call 24/7 and am the only point of contact for our ERP software. That said the company is much smaller and even with our CA and small China presence I might spend 1 hour every other month for on call stuff. The pay is better too

Scheduled downtimes are a bit of a bitch though as we have 2x10 hour shifts so if anything needs to be done during the weeknight I usually have to wait until 12:30am if I can't script it.

 

[trmiv]

This thread reminds me, I'm on call next week and it's me and my wife's 10 year anniversary during the week. Forgot about that when the schedule was released. DOH!!

 

[Zargon]

network engineer

on call every 6 weeks

basically from 5pm to 7am daily, we do Wednesday end of business day thru Wednesday start of business

I get paged atleast once a night for something, though it usually is as simple as sending an email notification to an admin

I'm salary, and by going on call I get a $50 stipend to cover the extra cell phone usage.

Though without going into the on call rotation, I would not be up for a promotion in the future, and supposedly I will get one in the next 6 months(been on call for a year, at this job for 2)

 

[Virge_]

IT Architect directly responsible for various facets of a fortune 100 company.

24/7 availability, but it's seldom necessary. The infrastructure and architecture I am responsible for is only accessed M-F 6-6, so almost everything that comes up is handled during the natural progression of the day. My salary is about 30% above industry standard (with a 15% guaranteed bonus that is usually closer to 22%+ based on performance) in my location and this compensation is intended to be a front-load for any high-availability needs. Over the past 3 years this high availability requirement has resulted in a single week where I put in 4 or so extra hours a night + a 10 hour Saturday shift.

Outside of that I work a typical 9-5 with about 280 hours of vacation a year, unlimited sick days, and flex work from home 40% if I feel like exercising it (which I seldom do as a personal preference, the office is quieter than home so focus comes more naturally there).

As far as work-life balance, my current gig is top notch. Previous two jobs (net admin, senior sys admin) were their own nightmare stories, however.. I just learned to interview and negotiate better somewhere along the way.

 

[Harrod]

Network Analyst, supporting voice switches and Acme/Oracle firewalls.

I'm on call 1 week a month. Typically I get 9 hours of overtime per week of being on call whether someone calls or not. Also when they do, it's an instant 2 hours of time once I get called, and after that time and a half.

One of the things that I struggle with is getting calls due to other people not answering their phones, and then deciding whether to bill for it. It sucks getting called at 4 am somedays, I feel like an operator half the time, which is why I'm posting in this thread.

I am fortunate that the equipment I support is relatively new and pretty stable.

 

[somethingsketchy]

Systems Engineer in a 6-week rotation (currently on-call right now). Required to carry a pager (a legit pager from the '90s) with a 30 minute response time. VERY small stipend for carrying the pager during the week.

Unfortunately most pages come from application monitoring, and as the POC for monitoring, I get paged a lot. We've argued to spread out the monitoring so IT is not responsible for application issues, but Development refuses to allow receiving alerts for their developers

I've had weeks where I was paged multiple times a day.