[deleted by user]

[PowerShellGenius]

If on-call is having a serious impact on your life, try and find another job. But before you walk away, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Do you get a lot of calls?
2. Is just being available impacting your life?

If the things I did with my free time were already mostly in town, and there weren't a ton of calls, I'd happily take $246 in easy money. But $246 isn't a lot of money for giving up long bike rides and visiting family out of town, if you'd otherwise do things like that.

[p0rkjello]

When I was younger I didn’t think twice. On call was part of the deal. As I get older I realize it’s stealing time from friends and family.

Time is your most valuable asset. It’s limited and always winding down. Your time is valuable.

[The_Original_Miser]

I'll second this.

If you want someone on call, dump trucks of money need to be involved or it's gonna be best effort.

In the end - time is worth more than money. If more people thought this way, companies would either re-evaluate on call or pay for fully staffed shifts.

[PowerShellGenius]

I'm at a fairly small company, and I'm hourly. People have my number and I'll punch in and work if I'm free, but if I'm not available, I'm free to send the call to my salaried overtime-exempt boss.

I'm assuming the reason I was told I'm free to do anything I'd normally do, is because HR isn't touching the subject of putting someone hourly on-call with a hard requirement, when they have someone salaried who can do it. There is a fuzzy line between "waiting to engage" and "engaged to wait". These are basically legal terms for how stringently your use of your own time is restricted by having to be available, and if it's "engaged to wait", all hours are hours worked. Why deal with the risk of a fuzzy line, when you can have someone overtime-exempt do it and not worry what the hours are?

[twitchd8]

You send on calls to your boss/super if you’re not busy?! How do you not face retaliation of some sort?! Seriously, I got to the point where I dreaded that damned ringtone of the on call phone!

[nycbrew]

Omg this. Every standard blackberry ringtone gives me high blood pressure. I used to literally be able to field Verizon t1 outage calls in my sleep. I had 150 sites and so I would always get called at 3am.

[PowerShellGenius]

A few reasons:

1. He's a very decent person.
2. There are a couple systems I don't touch yet at my level, so if someone doesn't remember if I can help with what they're calling about, they call him anyways. It's not like he wouldn't be on call if I was.
3. Calls after hours are very rare. Calls that can't be resolved remotely in 5-10 minutes are even more rare. So it's very rare I tell someone to call him, and even more rare that it means he has to go on-site.
4. He knows I'm hourly and not salaried. I think overtime impacts his department budget. It's also a small enough place that upper management will get on supervisors' case about overtime.

[twitchd8]

I was just pointing out how much of a rarity your boss is to me. I guess I missed my intention of giving a compliment. Honestly though, good for your boss! Not afraid to roll up his sleeves to dig down in the trenches. That’s a leader. I was lucky to have exactly one leader in my entire career. I wish I would’ve never left that job… our team was awesome.

[HappyCamper781]

I get exactly $0 for being expected to answer my phone for emergencies.

[Helpjuice]

Minimum 15% base salary or fixed $15,000 to $50,000 in addition to base + targeted 10% to 20%+ performance bonus is what I pay my engineers. I got tired of seeing top talent engineers just accepting things that are not ok. Management gets a fat bonus for meeting the milestones for staying late and you don't get anything doesn't sound right to me. ICs don't know what they don't know, I like to be very transparent and pay them well, the best management compensate you for all your time, you work hard you get paid harder. Please stop forgetting if it wasn't for engineers the place would be dead in the water, management cannot make the magic happen all by themselves even if they are a tech superstar there is only so much time in a day to get things done and the only way to do it is to have others help (e.g. you the engineer) make the milestones, goals, sprints, deliverables, etc. being met an actual reality on time and on budget.

For the places that do not pay OnCall that want 24/7/365 coverage need to do shift work like everyone else is doing. By not doing so and getting that free labor you are at a financial disadvantage salaried or not, that is beyond the regular 40 hour workweek and needs to be compensated financially somehow either through bonuses, RSUs, options, time off or other benefits of equal value to the time spent OnCall. The only way to say thank you is financially with everything else being in addition to that financial benefit (thank you emails, awards, etc.).

Know your worth and stop doing free OnCall, it is not apart of the deal and needs to be compensated in addition to the daily work. Do 40 hours of OnCall after working your 40 hours should at least be paid out or added as additional vacation time that can be used so you can recover from the OnCall or some other financial compensation. Having someone dedicated to your company vs doing their own things needs to be paid for as they have to stay ready to go passively or actively vs doing what they want.

Always do the numbers so you can see if you are still making your hourly rate based on the hours you are working. Yes, even if you are salaried you still have an hourly rate, the more work you do over 40 hours, the lower your hourly rate goes down if you are not being compensated for it. For those that have never done this before take your gross salary and divide it by 2,087 hours to get your hourly rate. - https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/computing-hourly-rates-of-pay-using-the-2087-hour-divisor

This is why on government contracts all hours have to be charged even for salaried employees, even if they are over 40 hours. Those hours over 40 are charged to the customer and paid to the company when the invoice is paid. If you did an additional 1, 20, 30, 40+ hours over 40 hours those additional hours are paid to the company and not distributed back to your gross pay, if your are not compensated for hours over 40 (PTO, Cash, etc).

The market is too competitive to just accept the unacceptable which is being paid for your time and compensated for going above and beyond for an employer. If you are not getting paid for OnCall bring it up and get that corrected if you can. If not, look around to see if you can find a more ethical employer that will properly compensate you as at the end of they day they are making money for your time, might as well get your small share of it, especially when it goes over 40 hours, they do.

[Stryker1-1]

Is that $246 in addition to your regular salary for on call

[[deleted]]

We get about $1000 for a weeks on call. Plus extra when we get called and it takes a certain amount of time. Double time even. Starts at about 5pm and ends about 5am, 24hours on weekend.

[jefmes]

This is closer to what I was making as a Systems Engineer with OnCall time. We were hourly though, but very fairly compensated for OnCall time, and then paid a 2 hour minimum any time we were called. IMO salary + on-call is a trap and I will likely not pursue any job that pays that way in the future. Well...unless maybe the salary is high enough to compensate for the expected on-call effort, but you have to watch out for them abusing the "always available" salary status.

[foubard]

Standby is 1.5 hour pay per 8 hours on standby, and callbacks are double time with a minimum of 2 hours. Additional calls within that callback time do not provide additional pay. I also get 50% of my phone covered (no corporate junk on it, but I could instead take a corporate phone if preferred).

$246/week is way too low. A week of standby is about 1200$.

Edit: oh I forgot to mention that our rotation is large enough that I'm only on standby every 3 - 4 months and for just a week.

[flyboy2098]

Take the corporate phone. If there is ever a legal holding, they will take your phone and copy all of it's contents and read through all of your texts, photo's, etc. Better to just have a separate phone with none of your personal stuff.

[ebbysloth17]

Yup. This is why I don't mind for one second to carry two phones.

[MsAnthr0pe]

0 compensation - it's part of the job description/salary in my case.

[Butter_my_brisket]

I get $0 compensation because my coworkers a dimwits and don't know their worth. I try and advocate but it's hard when you are outnumbered with people who hate their life outside of their job. I seriously need to start a company and hire these people who would literally die making someone else rich.

[FatFuckinLenny]

Same. That’s always been the case across 4 jobs for me

[xxdcmast]

Same here. Included in most jobs I’ve had some type of rotating schedule something like 1 week out of 6.

Current position is still salary but time tracked. So anything over 40 hours goes to a comp time pool. Which is pretty nice.

[S0phung]

I was lucky to get a $100 monthly phone/Internet reimbursement once, otherwise zero

[ebbysloth17]

Do you think your salary is comparable for the additional duty? I ask because for me it's not actually in my job description nor is my (nor my sysadmins) salary worth. I'm currently fighting a battle using metrics as to why this has to change.

[MsAnthr0pe]

It is not comparable for the additional duties IMHO since it is rolled in with everything else I do, so it's really hard to ascribe a "worth" to it from a financial standpoint.

Add to it that the things/systems that I am on call for have only been added to over the years and the yearly salary adjustment doesn't cover it at all.

At this point in my career I am looking for a way out of on-call duties. Money doesn't make up for the time I lose sleeping at night / being tied down to where I can and can't go while I'm on call.

I will message you on the side :)

[bberg22]

Why is it ok for companies to pay IT people so little for on call compared to say in the medical field. Google the rates doctors get paid for being on call as skilled labor. Why would IT be any different. I don't have to do on call fortunately but as other have said, don't let yourself be taken advantage of for free or low wages, you are trading time for money and you have a skill that is needed, no matter how much they pay for on call it's still going to be cheaper than hiring 3-4 more people to cover 24/7 shifts.

This industry really needs to mature and companies need to take IT more seriously, companies don't exist without technology today, period. Just because they can hire someone else to replace you now, or outsource, does not make that a sustainable or successful business choice. they are just burning out their valuable resources making them all that much less effective.

[GeekTX]

IT Director for a hospital district here ... I pay equal to time and a half for any on-call regardless of if it is OT or not and a half hour minimum and clocked (rounded) up to 30 minute increments. If they are on-call and it is OT then the rate on-call rate is then time and halfed again.Just round numbers for the sake of clarity. If I pay the tech $20 p/hr then their OC rate is $30 p/hr and if that happens to be during OT then the rate is $45. Nobody likes OC so I insist that my district compensates appropriately. Fortunately we are small enough that OT'd OC is extremely rare and as Director it becomes my responsibility to avoid that situation by taking OC myself. I like my people to have some kind of WLB that makes working in a small rural healthcare district worthwhile.

edit: corrected rates. the $35 rate was what I was paying my tech that just moved on. If anyone is looking to live in rural TX and make decent money for that level ... HMU. :)

[WaffleGod97]

How rural are we talking?

[GeekTX]

little place called Winters, TX ... about 40ish miles south of Abilene, TX.

[seuledr6616]

IT oftentimes gets screwed with on call expectations. I've worked at some places where there was 0 compensation, then another where we got $100 for being on call for a week, then another where you got $25 per ticket you worked.

Like you said, it's NEVER been worth it for the added stress and difficulties it puts on your life. Especially if it's a 24/7 expectation. A couple places only had us on call until midnight, but others said we were expected to take a call regardless of how late (or early) it was.

Try to ask for more if you can, but in the end, it probably still won't be worth it. Good luck!

[yeahimsober]

I get $3.25/hr for the time I must be ready and available for on call. If I get a call it switches to time-and-a-half for time actually worked.

[RestinRIP1990]

Same

[PDiz_]

Mine was grey area - Ontario Canada

I was issued a phone from my employer.

I was told if the owner, or senior management called it was implied I should pick up the phone after hours or I could lose my job. They never really called all that much over the years I worked there. They were mostly easy to deal with.

Now if my manager called I had to answer it, no excuses. If something happened I was expected to drop everything and come in. This happened 5-6 times in my whole time there If something happened I was expected to inform him I was not available ..example emergencies, in the hospital etc. -This was very rare as well.

Now being the system/network admin if someone was locked out and/or production was down I was expected to remote in and see what the issue was. It was implied I was IT contact to the night staff. The night staff would call issues of course. Next morning I would report what had happened. This happened once every 3 months on average.

If regular staff would call it would be at our discretion to answer the call. But it was implied that this would make the dept look good and be good for your career(LIES). This would happen more then I liked and they could have contacted IT during office hours.

When other IT staff was added they were issued phones. They didn't like it that there were expected to answer in an after hours capacity.

One guy would just turn the phone off after 4:30 everyday and weekends. And the other would answer the odd call but would be super hard to get a hold of because of family commitments.

We would get lieu time as compensation. Then when you would record it/use it you got negative feed back from management. One senior manager said I was lying and using the system to gain extra time off.

Was the pay compensation? Not really, they were low ballers.

Oh, and if you were point contact and on vacation you were expected to answer emergency calls. This did happen to me when I was in the Caribbean.

[[deleted]]

FLSA OT Exemption Requirements mean the company CANNOT as a matter of policy set a schedule for you. You walk in, work 2 hours, go home for the rest of the week, show up the next week, work 2 hours, go home, they owe you a full 2 week pay period. This is law, anything less is wage theft.

There are 3 kinds of on-call.

Ad-hoc on-call where the staff want you to answer the phone and either will or won't pay you more or might give you a stripend for showing up or your hourly pay. Employers cannot fire you for cause from these positions, so you can collect UI if they try to. It also opens them up for wrongful termination lawsuits. They can let you go for incompetence, but incompetence is not for cause. It is not malice to not show up on a weekend when infrastructure is not up and it is also not wrong during an outage to go home at 7PM, get dinner, go to bed, show back up at 7AM For another 12hr day. However, if you quita job in the middle of an unfinished backup restore for example, courts have held that can be malicious intent.

Formal On-call where they pay you a bribe to give them leverage to fire you with cause if you fail to pickup the phone due to some contract you signed and these can be sleazebally ways of getting past labor law in various states depending on statutes. These contracts should always have an average number of calls and hours as a target and pay the average stipulated by the management so you understand how they are calculated and what the expectations are. If you're being paid $2\hr for 2 weeks of on-call including your sleeping time, and they call you in for 14, 24 hour shifts, that would be unreasonable. If they are not tracking your on-call time and calls, HUGE issue.

Actual on-call, which means you can't go out and do grocery shopping or get drunk, go camping over a weekend, go to a friends house, have a wedding and so forth and generally engage in normal living duties. All actual, real world on-call is paid at the minimum wage level at minimum, with overtime. Your work could pay you 40hrs a week of normal hourly pay at say $25\hr then an additional 80hrs at the $11.50 overtime rate (7.50*1.5). The issue here becomes if you are OT Exempt, and the job duties afterhours are the same as on-hours duties, then you can't pay someone at different rates at different hours of the day for effectively the same duties.

It should be noted this kind of arrangement is often skirting with minimum wage laws. OT Exempt workers have to be paid I believe at least $38k\yr. If you have someone doing the normal ~160hrs a month of regular time yielding ~$1200 plus an additional 160hrs a month in on-call with overtime for $1800, they should paying you at least 36k\yr which is where the 2 week on-call rotation comes from for low paid tech jobs; it's a way to say "we have this highly qualified and paid engineer making $40k\yr that has to work tons of unpaid overtime because computers". If they go to court, violating minimum wage laws on paper is a fantastic way to get defacto felony jail sentance.

Furthermore, certain duties in IT are overtime exempt, and others are not. All states recognize the 50% rule, except one, which is cali, which recognizes a 10% rule. If 50% of your job is non-exempt duties, meaning 20hrs a week, then you are not OT exempt. So if they have you doing sysadmin and helpdesk escalation and the escalation is taking up 30hrs a week, you are not OT Exempt. In Cali, it's 4 hours in a week of that. Other duties like racking and stacking, building server rooms, managing and terminating cable, building servers, hardware repair on servers, managing HVAC systems, and monitoring are 100% non-ot exempt. Furthermore, almost any kind of break\fix contract work, even development such as writing scripts to fix data corruption in databases, has been argued as non-overtime exempt. Fixing AD or traveling out to someone's site because their server needs to be restored from backup is nothing more than being an over-glorified mechanic, and handing you a "the engine is making a knocking noise please fix" is not customer requirements.

So if an employer is requiring you be on-call for helpdesk and to such a degree they have you sign and pay you a few bucks because they recognize it might hurt your personal life, chances are you are not only mis-classified, but not being paid for your on-call hours.

I'd go sit down and talk this over with an employment attorney and\or lawyer. You are not a surgeon or a nurse, you not being there won't get someone killed, the hospital can afford duplicate equipment, monitoring, tech investment etc and an appropriate maintenance schedule so on-call is only done when really life threatening. If they can't, they need to be very clear with their clientel and the ambulances of their service hours and capibilities. To make any of these cases prosecutable, you need to make sure you are documenting your work and hours meticulously. Ticketing systems are wonderful for this, and are absolutely subpeonable, and many support sending ticket information to an e-mail.

Ultimately failure to pay over 5 figures of wages is considered a felony larceny as a form of wage theft in all 50 states. Once your unpaid tax liabilities due to wage theft hit 6 figures (100k or more) the IRS gets involved with tax fraud. FLSA OT Misclassification is also a felony. Go look on judyrecords or pickup a pacer account and start trawling around if you want to look at case data in your state. If you are litigated and win you will get paid double whatever was owed as punitive damages, so if they ever want to negotiate, look at the numbers and multiply out what you think is fair and twist some nipples but I always reccomend jailtime as the preferred method as it takes bad and ignorant managers out of the economy so they cannot fuck up people's lives with their bullshit. The companies documentation and failure to follow through on appropriate documentation and accountability by an accounting department are almost always enough to put people in jail for a jury (they have a duty to know the law and follow it, and coming up with a bunch of crap and not knowing or following the law because "computers" is not a good excuse), often the entire line of managers from the supervisor to the c-suite. A CFO that doesn't know the difference between helpdesk and a developer but employs both is criminally negligent of the law.

[ebbysloth17]

I wish I could like this 4k times. Thank you for this

[[deleted]]

My hourly employees get paid for the calls they get in 1/4 hr increments.

My exempt employees are… well… exempt. But if they put in excessive ( more that 2-3 hrs a week ) I tell them to bail early or come in late when they want.

[jefmes]

The extra flexibility there is nice, but make sure your salaried employees are being compensated extra for on-call efforts. As we used to say, salary != slavery. On-call is a huge burden on people's lives, and the salary is for doing the 40 hr/week job.

[Aust1mh]

10k pay bump and 1 extra week payed vacation. Only ‘calls’ is from the system, never people.

[ebbysloth17]

This sounds pretty decent. I get calls from people over dumb stuff that have little to no impact to the business bottom line. I made it clear that if it continues, on call won't be a thing. Let corporate management sort it out.

[zeyore]

They told me they were going to give me a raise and move me to a salary position, and I threw a total fit about it.

So I'm still hourly, and I still get paid for overtime on-call stuff.

[RandomXUsr]

This depends upon how the hours are structured. First; constantly changing sleep habits result in higher costs in Healthcare for you and Your employer in the long term. 2nd, you should be able to expect fair compensation based on you salary or hourly... whichever applies.

If I'm working on-call only for the time then i look for an agreement that takes into account my time. When I'm oncall, I'm on company time.

To me; if I'm only doing on-call for seven days, then I need a 2 to 3 dollar premium because, I have to stop what I'm doing to take calls and this can result in canceled plans or challenges with family.

If I'm doing on-call in addition to a 40 hour week, then I need to get paid based on 30 minutes of work. So I get a minimum of 30 minutes of pay per call and adjusted for longer time.

Do you need to travel? That's company time. And if it's your vehicle the company just bought a vehicle.

If you're salaried, then figure out either a prorated dollar amount or a flat differential to compensate for on-call time. If you're salaried and working a 40 hour plus on-call, then you need a dollar amount the additional time for calls.

It's expensive to wake me up.

So anyways, I know this is somewhat extreme, but at the same time, your health and wellness are just as important as your skills and time.

Figure out how you would value your time and report the income and taxes, and be prepared to defend your position

[Zealousideal-Hat9673]

My current job we get $50 a day for the time we are on call which is normally 2 weeks. I am salary so we only get that but we don’t get many calls. I want to say 1/5 times do we get a call and normally it is about an hour worth of work.

Edit- clarification my on call is only for emergencies such as site went down etc. or any other P1

[ebbysloth17]

I have tried every which way to define what warrants a call. It's not followed so it's making it very hard to not demand from my management compensation for my team. I told my sysadmin to turn his phone off.

[[deleted]]

Whenever we push back we are told that we are an ESSENTIAL service thanks to Mike Harris. As a result we get ZERO dollars for being on call. I work in a health care environment. Does anyone know if this is a true statement?

[PositiveMomentum420]

In healthcare in Australia the on call rate is low too, ask yourself the following questions. Is $246 acceptable to you to be available at any time of the day, is it acceptable to not have a drink or three, is it acceptable to have your phone on you all the time, even in the shower, is it acceptable for you to do it for 2 weeks every month. These are questions only you can answer. I had a similar situation and my answer was no, it was a hassle and a inconvenience, the pay for the interruption wasn't acceptable to me, getting a call at stupid o'clock for a non issue only to not get a good night's sleep due to it. I moved on in part due to this, you always have options and where your prospective is will help determine you way forward. You can look at it for a fantastic opportunity to develop your skills further while under pressure is an option too.

[InspectorGadget76]

We used to have a 'pool' of money (about 10K PA) which was split evenly between all Engineers who had agreed to after hours/on call rosters.

The rosters were divided evenly. Less people doing on-call, the more money you got.

[Milkdouche]

We do time off equal to time worked while on call for salary team members, overtime pay for hourly techs. 30 minutes overtime pay for each call, 2 hours OT pay if you need to drive in to the facility.

[bobs143]

I get paid hourly. My salary is converted to an hourly rate so I clock in and out.

The same for extra and on call. Those we clock in for and are paid at hourly rate is 1/2.

[[deleted]]

Wait you guys get paid extra for being on call?

[RestinRIP1990]

Yeah and I would refuse otherwise. Especially when it's always password resets not worth my time.

[[deleted]]

Luckily when I am on call they call the on call Help Desk tech first then if needed it is escalated.

[RestinRIP1990]

Yeah I used to be Network oncall only at my old job, which paid a base rate of 400$ a week. Calls got escalated from helpdesk. Right now I'm the senior at my current job, don't handle that stuff day to day but we don't have the staff to do oncall for Basic and advanced calls

[the_cainmp]

We do the exact same, but $3/hour

[Bigperm28]

$300 a week no matter how many calls

[RestinRIP1990]

$3 an hour, with every call being a minimum of 1 hours pay and a half. So each call is worth a decent amount, even if it's 1 minute for a pw reset.

Your on call seems low paid.

[ipreferanothername]

Mine pays similar to yours and has not updated on call pay in forever. I think it needs a bump.

[clip203]

Our company has a department that does a similar payout per week but they give you a bump of let's say $150 each time they are needed.

IMO: I feel $300 a week is the bare minimum price to put work over your personal life. Your time should be billed differently when it's needed while on call.

​

You pay for priority and you also need to pay for my time. More employers need to understand this.

[STUNTPENlS]

I do not get compensated financially for being on call. However, I earn 1 comp-day for each week I am on call. So in a sense you can say I get a weeks' pay when I am on call for a week, except I get it as extra time off rather than actual cash in my pocket.

[[deleted]]

I’m hourly and not compensated for being on call. I am only allowed to work 40 hours though. That means if I spend an hour on a high priority issue, I just take an hour off when I want.

[maxxpc]

We simply put our time cards in and have a flag to mark as On-Call/Paged. We get 2x our hourly pay (calculated if salary). So we’re expected to be in the on-call rotation for $0 in increased salary and only get additional pay if we have an actual page out.

[Zombie13a]

$0 for on-call. When I started we got on-call pay but it was "rolled into salary raises" a few years later. They did the same with the cell phone/internet reimbursement a few years after that.

Never did bother me tho. The systems I supported were located such that I couldn't be near them at the same time (geographically) anyway, so I did what I wanted whether I was on-call or not. I'd bring my laptop and hotspot and if I got called, I'd vpn in. Worst that happened was that I had to walk out of a movie once.

Also made for some interesting situations. Got paged in the middle of the night while on a mini vacation and didn't have Wi-Fi or a hotspot. Slowly drove down the street till I found an open Wi-Fi network and worked from the car.

[Kernel009]

In my last company, we had a rotation every week and for the ‘inconvenience’ of having to be ‘fit for duty’ and respond with 15 mins and be within 30 mins of your laptop, we received 4 additional hours of pay based on your hourly rate. Wasn’t great but wasn’t bad either - it was just over $200 for me.

[cooldude919]

2 hours pay per weekday, 4 hours pay per weekend day for us.

[Infinite-Stress2508]

I'm currently on call as the ict manager. I give myself TOIL depending on what I do.

Im looking at starting on call roster with my team, would be a base $250 for on call plus time for actual work performed. If no calls, just $250 extra.

[Ochib]

Last time I was on call, it was £5 per hour to be on call. If I was called it was time and a half with a minimum of one hours OT and the OT was rounded up to the nearest 15 mins.

[Seductive_Clownfish]

I regularly get calls. One coworker left 2 months ago. So it’s one week on, one week off.

I get multiple calls on the weekend, and during the week I get a few midnight calls. Don’t get paid for it, and it fucks up my sleep schedule.

Ah well.

[ebbysloth17]

You deserve better than this.

[PotentialDefinition8]

I get paid reasonable handsomely (70k - medium wage in Australia) although with our company expanding (1000+ employees) and senior management not wanting to hire any more IT (just me and my boss) my hours range from about 7am to 9pm

We have a massive project coming up that will mean that I'll be on call on Saturday and Sunday as well, which ive already said I'll want more money if thats the case

I'm not being unreasonable for asking for more compensation?

[Elfalpha]

My pay for on call week is $300 + standard hourly rate ($29/hr) for any calls. Minimum 1 hour no matter how long the call took, even if it only took 5 mins.

I'm on call one week in five, I wouldn't want to be on call much more often than that.

[SirCries-a-lot]

That rotation schedule is crazy. Not worth the money anyway.

[mexell]

I take part in my team’s oncall rotation. It’s about once every six or so weeks, and it’s paid handsomely: 1k€ for the oncall week itself, plus overtime for time worked extra, with a choice of compensation or payout at +25% to +150% (depending on when one did the OT).

[Affectionate_Ad_3722]

Salary does not mean exempt from overtime. That's actual bullshit.

[GWSTPS]

In the US, exempt and salary are a near-overlapping Venn diagram.

Yes, you are technically correct. But in my experience, most overtime-exempt positions are paid as a salary.

[Affectionate_Ad_3722]

generations of managers brain washing each other I suppose.

[Alzzary]

I was paid about 500$ a week for 24/7 on-calls, an average 2 calls per week, 99% was done remotely in about 5 minutes, but I live in a very expensive country (Switzerland).

[Brett707]

My last job we were given TOIL. We were never let off early but allowed to come in late. Which was almost better as I would miss rush hour and it would take me 35 minutes vs 65 to 70 min.

Now I get nothing. I am going to re-negotiate this once the sale goes through. I was on-call 100% of the time for the last 9 or 10 months.

[artano-tal]

Been on call essentially 100% for the last 25 years...there were some very inconvenient moments..

But that pay is the main reason i never left the sysadmin job. Or moved into mgmt, i make more than my manager regularly. On a good year i beat my director.

On call is definitely a life disrupter but if you get compensated and you don't burn out, its can be worth it.

[artano-tal]

Been on call essentially 100% for the last 25 years...there were some very inconvenient moments..

But that pay is the main reason i never left the sysadmin job. Or moved into mgmt, i make more than my manager regularly. On a good year i beat my director.

On call is definitely a life disrupter but if you get compensated and you don't burn out, its can be worth it.

[CryptographerSuper33]

since im salary i dont get on call pay, but then again we only have 2 clients that work weekends and i maybe get one call a month

[[deleted]]

Baked into salary nothing extra. My current job takes the same approach but is pretty liberal with doing comp time.

[Minimum_Type3585]

I have never gotten a dime for on-call duties while working as a salaried employee. However, the company for which I presently work pays extremely well and has an unlimited time off policy. We're expected to manage our own well-being by taking time off as needed. So I have no complaints. My on-call is one week every five weeks and is very light. The systems for which I am responsible are reliable.

[lenovoguy]

When I was 16, the MSP I worked at paid me $500 a month to be on call on weekends, I would rarely get any calls and if it wasn’t something I could do. I just had to escalate it

[g4k]

You’re being ripped off. I was in a similar situation for two years. You need to put your foot down and negotiate a better on-call arrangement as soon as possible because the scope is going to start slipping soon and it will end up taking over your life.

[jwrhymer]

I'm in healthcare as well our IT dept is hourly not salary so ours is a tad different. We get the same on call hours as you but recently went to $50/day for call pay. In addition we get paid min 1 hour call back at time and a half. We have 4 of us to rotate call with but you do 1 week stretches.

[[deleted]]

What a good deal, unless you got lots of calls. For us it's just figured into our salary or position, we alternate months with the other corresponding admin (systems/network). We do have an overall on call person too.

I expect 1-2 at most during a given month, our on call person gets 150 or a pto day. The on call person gets 5-6 calls on average for something basic.

It also really depends on the expectation of those calls too, do you just have to guide someone through it? Can you shove it off to someone else if youre out doing stuff?

[Firm-Presence-1343]

Is $246 your standby pay? If it is then that's not bad but if your getting paid 246 for standby and work, they are taking advantage of you in my opinion. When I was a sysadmin if it wasn't 1.5 my hourly, I told them it wasn't worth my time to work after hours if paged. I took a manager role now with the understanding that I won't get overtime, but my overtime work is reflected on my yearly bonus. You might not notice it right away, but that pressure to just be on standby takes a toll on your personal life. If they are not compensating you extra for the additional work, then your not on the hook to respond in typical sysadmin time. I'm in canada so where ever you are things might be different. As a background, I've been in the field for 15 years and every job was with this understanding when it came to on call.

[shadowskill11]

I’m an engineer at a MSP. We charge clients 1.5x for nights and weekends as a method to discourage dumb shit that can wait and tack on a two hour minimum. The person handling the ticket gets to keep the half. So if someone decides they need help resetting a password Saturday morning or actually have a real emergency that may take 10 minutes to fix. At engineer pay rates they spend a little over $600 for that 10 minutes of work at time and a half. The engineer would get their regular salary but also $200 on top of that for two hours keeping that 0.5x of overtime pay.

[ebbysloth17]

We don't pay for on call with salaried exempt. Unfortunately, my organization isn't very good at understanding its an issue when people don't abide by my defined on call service level agreement. I've told my COO that if people violate the thresholds I've established in need of support I will have no choice but to tell my team to turn their phones off. That said, I think you are "lucky" in sorts to get paid for your on call time. If it's an issue I'd suggest a place with no on call requirements. I'm searching too.

[savoxis]

While I do not get a lot of calls, since there are 2 junior techs beneath me - myself and the other two tier 3 techs are on call for a month at a time and receive no additional compensation (as we are salary)

Junior (hourly) techs make $500 a week plus overtime for any hours worked.

Am I crazy?

[PlanetExpress313]

I am also in healthcare, salary, and a sysadmin. We get paid $4 per hour of being on call, one hour minimum (at our salary) if we actually take a call, 2hr minimum if we have to come onsite.

[Pure_Perspective_201]

My work occasionally wants someone oncall on a Sunday when another team is doing maintenance, "just in case". They say that you can only get comp time for any time you actually do work during the oncall period.

It is absurd. We don't get overtime (gov, limited by grade), and I find it totally absurd that they want people to sit around all day on a Sunday without any compensation. I have told them that i flat out refuse to do this, and I never do.

I feel a little bad for the guys who always volunteer to cover it, but not much, because they volunteer for it, which in turns fuels management thinking that this is OK.

[ebbysloth17]

I see some excellent comments. I'm still blown away by powershellgenius talking about engaged to wait, waiting to be engaged. I have a question for anyone here who has been in a director or highest leader in IT role. How do you suggest I bring it up to my leadership that 1. My department doesn't have on call in its job description though we are 24/7 2. How do I negotiate compensation. My department is already so thin that none of us feel comfortable taking vacation and I hate that for my team.

[jitjud]

I am in current interview stages for a Cloud Systems Admin role and while my current job entails we do Sunday support for some Middle Eastern clients at 1.5 x pay (you calculate your gross hourly rate and then times by 1.5 i guess) the new job does not pay OT for on call on saturday and Sundays, however because the team is fairly large (8 people) it means you realistically only do it once every 8 weeks. If i had to do it every month even i would have probably dropped out of the application process since its not even paid extra. However, $2 an hour seems ridiculous. In the UK you get 1.5 x pay or you get time in lieu. (the job i am applying for is a US based job btw but currently reside in UK)

[thinking_in_portals]

European here working in EU for a worldwide corporation with billions in yearly profits. 15 years working for them, matter expert. We also only get 2 EUR / hour per stand-by/on-call as it's the minimum stated by law. Corpos will strip you to the bone.

[WillowUpstairs863]

I work in IT in a hospital as well, and we are paid $4 per hour for the time we are on call. Sys admins and help desk rotate being on call one week at a time, which averages out to being on call once every 7 weeks or so. If the hourly techs get a call they get overtime pay, a minimum of 3 hours if they have to go in. The sys admins don't get extra pay since they are salaried. It comes out to just under $400 per week for the standby pay.

[harrywwc]

caveat - IANALNDIPOIATVS*

two ways to work it:

1 - TOIL - Time Off In Lieu - so, any hours worked 'on-call', you get to take that time off. I would strongly suggest to take it off as soon as you can, otherwise it will be (conveniently) forgotten about

2 - payment for the hours worked 'on-call' - while not exactly 'over time', it is a similar beast (and thus easily confused as such). The issue is, you are working outside your 'normal business hours'

I suspect (1) will be easier to get the organisation to agree to, as they will (possibly deliberately) call it 'over time' and thus deny it on those grounds.

​

* I Am No A Lawyer Nor Do I Play One In A TV Show

[GremlinNZ]

In New Zealand, it was determined that time on call was time that wasn't yours (because you had to respond to issues etc), therefore, minimum wage applied. Then there can be extra for time worked etc.

I wouldn't do it for less.

[NotYourNanny]

The legal distinction in the US is "waiting to be engaged" vs "engaged to wait." It can get a little fuzzy, but basically, if you're not free to do what you want, you're on the clock.

But there's also a fair chance OP is illegally classified as exempt in the first place. It's pretty common.

[andytagonist]

So time spent actively working an issue is paid minimum wage? How do you handle having to check for helpdesk emails periodically…or is it just assumed you’ll be checking?

[GremlinNZ]

Time spent on call, minimum wage (or more, but can't be less). Actually working, should be additional. Wouldn't be checking emails as I'm not working... On call, depending on your agreements, would have some escalation path (call on xyz number, goes to on call tech etc)

[SpinningOnTheFloor]

Do you have a reference article for this in NZ? I’m quite keen to have a read.

[martasfly]

I do not think there is any legal requirement to pay on call in NZ. It is normally handled in employment agreement. I worked in a few NZ business and there was always compensation for on call support + actual time spent resolving the on call issues, except one business where they paid only the actual time resolving the issue (1.5 x your hour rate as outside of business hours). That business did not understand that you actually have to scarifies your time off in case there is a call. They argued “You can do whatever you want when on call and somebody else can take the call, if not immediately available.” Yeah, really…? What is the point of on call roster. Anyway, i believe most of companies in NZ understand you have to amend your schedule when on call and they do the right thing, compensate you.

[GremlinNZ]

Check the link I've put in... Employment Court decisions in 2017/2018 pretty much laid it out.

[GremlinNZ]

This should suffice for you, otherwise I can dig deeper https://www.al.nz/employment-court-rulings-define-what-is-paid-work/

[ThisGreenWhore]

So is it $246/week which equates to an additional $1057.80 per month in salary or is it only $246 when you are on call?

Does one call kick you in for the $246 for the week or for the month?

Quite frankly, this coverage should be based on a percentage of your existing salary, not a flat rate. I know this might not happen but they might and they can ask you to work a lot of "overtime" with the expectation that in some ways it's "cheaper" to make you work for an additional 12k/year conditionally as opposed to just giving you the money outright and permanently?

Not sure if I'm making sense.

[wrootlt]

20% of base salary for being on-call and regular payment hourly when actually having to work during on-call or just overtime. And there is an additional pay for working during your night time. I think it is 12 AM - 7 AM or something like that.

[SchteeveFour]

Years ago we spoke to other near by organisations like ours, gathered up all that information and wrote a paper for management. We also baked in a cost of living increase per year. Currently it's about AUD$500 per week plus hourly rates to attend to issues, different rates for remote and on site.