CylonRed
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County | reply to tankabbot5
Re: Onyone else on call 24/7 365?
I used to be and most train engineers are on call 24x7 as well. |
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drew
Reformation
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs:
 ·wavebroadband
| reply to tankabbot5
My boss expects me to be without really being willing to provide comp time or an increase in pay.
I have "official" on-call days for support for our company's software that are compensated by a 1/4 of a day of PTO. My biggest problem is being up until 1:30AM and having to be at work at 8.
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Come play Mafia! | My Picture Blog |
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quetwo
That VoIP Guy
Premium
join:2004-09-04
East Lansing, MI
| reply to tankabbot5
I'm on call 24/7. My group owns and maintains our county-wide ENS system, in addition to our backup 911 center. I get called in about once a month, and have expected work hours outside our business hours during the busy season. I get comp-time, but rarely have time to use it. I think last year I had over 240 hours of comp-time expire.
I'm a manager, but also one of the few people that knows how all the systems interconnect, so I'm almost always the one called on site to fix it. |
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peterboro1
join:2006-11-03
Peterborough, ON
| reply to tankabbot5
I run my own business and the phone goes to me 24/7 365.
There is a difference between on call, as some have posted who rarely get called, and those of us out on New Years eve, Christmas morning you name it.
You people want on call. Try having teenagers. I'll take the business calls any day. |
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fcisler
Premium
join:2004-06-14
Riverhead, NY
| reply to tankabbot5
Yes...but within limits.
They ALL have my cell phone number and don't hesitate to call if something goes wrong. If I feel like answering I will...otherwise to voicemail they go. I'd say 75% of the time I can answer/resolve within 5 minutes of a phone call.
Those days i'm close by (I live around 5 miles away) and feel like making some cash I will usually drive in to push a button or poke something back. 5hrs minimum straight time which translates to 7.5hrs overtime...even if i'm there to flip a breaker (and yes, It has happened before!) |
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Matt
Take me down to the paradise city
Premium
join:2003-07-20
Jamestown, NC
 ·North State Commun..
| said by fcisler  :5hrs minimum straight time which translates to 7.5hrs overtime...even if i'm there to flip a breaker (and yes, It has happened before!) That reminds me of the time I had to drive 4 hours away to push a button on Christmas Eve because everyone else was on vacation. I asked the trooper over the phone if he pushed the IML button (pop quiz, who supported mainframes?) and he swore he did. So what did I do when I got there ... pushed the IML button and all the terminals came up of course. I just stared at him for a moment, then got in my car and drove 4 hours back home. |
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TheRul
You couldn't think of something?
Premium
join:2007-09-18
Victorville, CA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Been there, done that, bought the tshirt, wore the tshirt, wife threw out the tshirt... for 15 years.
Once I spent half the day while at lego land with my family, on the phone supporting a couple of jerks.
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If you can't laugh at yourself, you have nothing to laugh at.
Come and spread the FUD »Pub Games |
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kewlkeed
Grouch
Premium
join:2005-02-05
Knowlton, QC
| reply to tankabbot5
I'm on call 24/7/365 with two boys ages 9 and 10... So you can imagine I loath it when the phone rings.
To the OP, there's nothing really bad with being on call. But your boss had damn well better be willing to compensate you with time off during the week as well as some sort of pay raise for your time away from family etc. Otherwise I'd tell him where to shove the job. Anyone who expects someone to be on call 24/7/365 needs to understand that such a position comes at a bigass price tag.
I have nothing against being on call, but I'm compensated for it in many ways... If not though I wouldn't hesitate for a second to say fuck-it and walk away.
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Justin - DSLR resident grouch and Mr Negativity
TSI Fanboy - "Dontchya wish your 'net was hot like mine! Ohhh Dontchya!"
Have a nice day! |
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NetAdmin
CCNA
join:2008-05-22
| reply to tankabbot5
I'm on call 24/7/365 as well. Of course I knew this going in as I work for a communications company that runs 24/7 and it really isn't a problem. The only part of on-call that sucks is being the designated on-call contact because some on-call pages really are issues that can wait till normal business hours and don't need to be resolved immediately
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Kilroy was here |
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nixen
Rockin' the Boxen
Premium
join:2002-10-04
Alexandria, VA
·Cox HSI
·Speakeasy
| reply to Nightfall
said by Nightfall :All in all, being on call isn't a problem if your IT department is well funded and you have the skills. Or you aren't supporting customers that INSIST on using broken technology (*cough* SunCluster *cough*). Or insist on using unsupported storage and ignoring when they're told it's heading for a massive failure (nothing like, four months later, watching a million-dollar/day site go down for three days because they ignored you). Or having customers with root access on their hosted systems.
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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell |
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techjoe
Premium
join:2004-02-20
Schererville, IN
| reply to drew
said by drew :My biggest problem is being up until 1:30AM and having to be at work at 8. That's my issue. Worked until ~1am Thursday, worked from home all day Friday, worked a few hours Friday night, worked a few hours Saturday night (what a life), worked until 2am Sunday night, had to show up at 8am today.
My bosses hate comp days and working from home. While they haven't stopped me yet, I kind of make my own schedule when I have to juggle this stuff. Out of our whole team, two of us work after-hours on a regular basis. Unfortunately, lately so much of my work requires outages or cluster moves that I have to wait until you're all cozy in your beds before I begin my work.
It's hit and miss. I'll go a few months with very minimal outside of 8-5 work, then I'll have a few road trips and late nights all back to back to back by sheer luck that just take it out of me.
One day here or there aren't bad, but I'm feeling the grind now...Hoping that tonight's my last late night for a while.
This crap's making me feel old and I'm a few years from 30 still. Ah well, pays the bills at least eh?
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Baka wa shinanakya naoranai |
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jester121
Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | reply to tankabbot5
I drink far to heavily and frequently to be on call after hours. |
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drew
Reformation
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs: | So do some of our counterparts at some of our clients, yet there they are.... |
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fcisler
Premium
join:2004-06-14
Riverhead, NY
| reply to techjoe
said by techjoe :My bosses hate comp days and working from home. While they haven't stopped me yet, I kind of make my own schedule when I have to juggle this stuff. Ding ding ding! They started giving me a hard time about ANY overtime...even simple things like updates. "Can't you do that during the day?". After they realized I COULD - but it affected them then it got approved.
Eventually I just worked out with my boss that I can trade some overtime for "straight time" - IE: I stayed an hour late to do updates, following day I was free to show up an hour late or go home an hour early. They aren't a huge fan of it but the alternative is to pay me for 1 1/2 hours.
Depending upon how much overtime I do I will split it up between "overtime" and "straight trade" - latter not being an approved method.
The best was when they questioned the UPS fire and subsequent replacement of UPS and temp power. I spent almost 36 hours here....sleeping an hour here or there. Besides a electrical engineer not understanding why they couldn't use the single phase 240v generator (120/208Y to transformer to 480 delta to AC units and UPS, from UPS to transformer to 120/208Y) administration simply couldn't understand how "emergency datacenter shutdown, power maintenance, UPS repair and temporary power" could possibly take anywhere near that long!
After receiving the bills from everything (including the crane for removing old UPS out of 3rd floor and installing new one) their least worry was my overtime check....
They will still question certain times I put in for overtime....but i've learned to put "BFP" (Big F*cking Problem) on major issues and they don't really question those. |
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techjoe
Premium
join:2004-02-20
Schererville, IN
1 edit | See I took the bait after a few months and went salary. Many days go by where I still think I shot myself in the foot. However, it has some perks at times.
My old boss was more of the "trade an hour for an hour" mind. I had a PTO day preplanned, and was called for a "security emergency" which turned out to be a user not understanding a simple function, long story short, and wasted half the day working with them. The old boss refunded me .5 PTO after I moaned and groaned about it. Nevermind that it kind of ruined my day rolling out of bed to that headache, I guess.
The new regime per-say seems to be more result-driven. I sat down with my new boss's new boss (yeah, don't ask) when he came in and he was fully supportive of flexible hours and just getting the work done. He's a road warrior and I've gotten 2am email responses and such, so I think we finally have someone that sees eye to eye on the whole "just get it done" vs "I like to see bodies around the office". Nothing on paper, and there's still nothing official, but at least it's a start.
Companies are scared, rightfully so, of flexible time. So many people abuse it. I'm always fearful that I'm abusing it but after a bit of worry I stop and break down the hours I put in VS the "40 hour week". It's fairly rare that I ever come in under 40 on my counts. I maintain good records of my after-hours work as a CYA and do deliver the results I need to (as far as I know!), but it's never fun especially in today's job market. 
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Baka wa shinanakya naoranai |
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Thaler
Premium
join:2004-02-02
Encino, CA
| reply to tankabbot5
No longer working in IT myself, but try being the only person with any tech-savvy in an entire family tree. I don't give out my number, but somehow, I'm on call 24/7/365. 
Least when I was working in IT I got paid for my trouble calls. Family wants their stuff fixed, over the phone, regardless the ungodly hour they may be calling. |
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beeman65
join:2001-07-23
Mckeesport, PA
| reply to tankabbot5
At my old job I used to be 24/7 365. Basically everyone in my group was. Eventually they made it so we would rotate weekend on call duty where one person would be the designated on call person with others in the group being backup, so everyone had one weekend a month. Luckily during my time there no major problems happened on my weekends, only during weekdays and after hours on the weekdays.
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Get Firefox. Join the new wave. |
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drew
Reformation
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs:
·wavebroadband
| reply to techjoe
No one in this company has the luxury of being hourly.
When I'm on call the night before, I usually show up at 9AM. No one has questioned it (my boss is a show up at 10 guy) but it's pretty easy to explain "I stayed up until 12am" to them. Then it's a grumble but an understanding one.
In my line of work, the vast majority of our problems come in between 9pm and 12am. So going to bed at 10 is silly. 12 am isn't that late per-say, but still, when it's out of company obligation versus my own entertainment...
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Come play Mafia! | My Picture Blog |
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OSUGoose
join:2007-12-27
Columbus, OH
clubs: | reply to tankabbot5
Talk to any Directv or for that matter Satellite Sub/independent contractor. We are, despite the whole concept of being a contractor vs employee |
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kc8jwt
join:2005-10-27
Cheshire, OH
| reply to tankabbot5
I work in a school system so I am not really 24/7, but we do have an Adult Education department that has classes after hours and weekends. I have had them call me on a Saturday when I was in bed complaining of no internet. They had to have the internet for testing. I had warned them of a scheduled outage from the state, but it seems it went no further than the receptionist. Basically I couldn't do anything for them.
I have went in on Saturdays and Sundays when we were switching network switches. I can "comp time" most of the work since I am salary. I don't do it much though. I go in at 7 and come out at 3:30 in the afternoon. This past year they decided that they would pay me a stipend for my cell phone service if my cell phone number was published in the company directory. So far I haven't had people call me asking personal computer questions. |
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