Reply to: On-Call Compensation (or lack of)

[monobrow]

I can't do it permanently, it is not viable in the current setup, nor would I want to do it more than once a month.

If you have self-respect, and respect your own time, then in my position you wouldn't be doing that. Also, as mentioned, we have a minimal number of people, and operate a rota which means at least there is some structure for dates on-call.

I will try my luck and see where I get; what this thread has certainly brought out is the people who 'have a clue' and understand your time is precious, and you should be remunerated accordingly. You guys and gals know who you are.

It is also apparent there are numerous people here who really have no genuine idea of the value of their time, and as such would accept £150 a week in a 24x7 production environment, £300, or £500 - in fact, it's fair to say that a few people don't know at all what their time is worth.

Think that is harsh, but fair.

If £500 isn't enough and £1000 is.. how will an extra £300 a month change your life?

I'm sorry that you decided to have an career in IT, and that you feel being paid double the average UK salary and a 12.5% increase to your salary for being on-call once a month isn't enough for you.

perhaps you should re-train into Nursing? By doing this, I can arrange to double your hours and halve your salary should you wish to persue this.

Honestly, get a grip, all we are talking about here is greed. Everyone is telling you it is fair and you won't listen. If you have skills that are transferable to another organisation and that you are underpaid, then honestly, why aren't you fighting off other organisations who want to hire you? or is it that you are onto a good thing and just want to squeeze your employer for everything you can get?

[stek]

I'm permie for now (second time - contractor since 92!) on a bit more than OP, our on-call is 200 quid for the on-call week, one in four, plus any hour or part of an hour at 1.5x weekdays, 2.0x weekend.

On average I do about 20hrs a month extra as a result of on-call and as we do a lot of changes as well, some overnight, it does mount up.

I reckon I might pull 75k this year which isn't bad for Yorkshire and when you consider holidays/sickness/benefits etc it makes me wonder why I only consider this a temporary situation until the contracting market picks up...

The answer?

1. I can't stand the thought of driving to the same place to work for years on end...

2. I feel trapped.

3. I feel I'm not in charge of my own destiny.

4. I can't stand the appraisals/meetings/talking bollocks stuff, on average I spend one day a week not doing any actual real work.

5. There are no fit birds at at this place.

Still, I like the place and I'm in no hurry to jack it in for a tyoolip rate, so I'm looking around now and asking for top rates, for the benefit of all, raising the bar for you lads and lasses. Of course I'm getting nothing, but I will soon!

[NetworkEngineer]

sense a little too much bravado from the OP here, £500 aint much blah blah blah, might not be at the moment but can assure you in other times it might pay your mortgage that month!

Now i've worked on call for 7 days on 7 off, and that was for @£200 a week plus 1 hr per hour worked, not at overtime rate. Might not sound much but can add up very quickly esp when perm oncall cos lazy permies dont want to do it.

Now the only element can relate to you on is the fact you live in a diff part of the country, can you not agree some flexibility during the times you are not oncall to work from home, leave earlier on a fri, late on monday etc.

I can't do it permanently, it is not viable in the current setup, nor would I want to do it more than once a month.

If you have self-respect, and respect your own time, then in my position you wouldn't be doing that. Also, as mentioned, we have a minimal number of people, and operate a rota which means at least there is some structure for dates on-call.

I will try my luck and see where I get; what this thread has certainly brought out is the people who 'have a clue' and understand your time is precious, and you should be remunerated accordingly. You guys and gals know who you are.

It is also apparent there are numerous people here who really have no genuine idea of the value of their time, and as such would accept £150 a week in a 24x7 production environment, £300, or £500 - in fact, it's fair to say that a few people don't know at all what their time is worth.

Think that is harsh, but fair.

[downsouth]

sense a little too much bravado from the OP here, £500 aint much blah blah blah, might not be at the moment but can assure you in other times it might pay your mortgage that month!

Now i've worked on call for 7 days on 7 off, and that was for @£200 a week plus 1 hr per hour worked, not at overtime rate. Might not sound much but can add up very quickly esp when perm oncall cos lazy permies dont want to do it.

Now the only element can relate to you on is the fact you live in a diff part of the country, can you not agree some flexibility during the times you are not oncall to work from home, leave earlier on a fri, late on monday etc.

[Wanderer]

Some of these responses aren't helpful; I'm not a junior. I'm a senior on £47k, so I don't see how, in what world, £500 plus nothing else is fine. For a 24/7 interational network criticial environment, I don't see how £500 can be seen as enough, personally. In addition, everybody, regardless of status, gets the same money. If you would accept this, you would have to be either desperate or crazy.

I make about £100k and I'm happy to do on call for about £400/week. The permies I work with are on ~50k get ~250/week for on call. The senior managers who deal with escalations when a serious incident happens get nothing - it's expected that at their level they just get on with the job at whatever time of the day or night it is. On call can be a bit of a pain and it's not for everyone but if you don't want to do the on call work then then don't do it, let the juniors have the money!

If you don't think you are paid enough then ask for a pay rise or go and work somewhere else. It's rare that I make personal comments on this forum but I honestly do think you are bitching far too much dude.

[NetworkEngineer]

I also work in networking (although I do more architecture than engineering nowadays) and I think that the support model of the OP's company is fundamentally flawed. Yes the business can apparently fill the on-call requirement by juniors who will be very happy with £500 for a weeks on-call but what happens when it all kicks off with a bitch of an issue that the junior can't resolve, who do they escalate it too? Am I reading it correctly that there is one individual, representing one line of support (first/second line if it's a junior) 'out of hours' - which in actuality is more than 50% of the time? Additionally the support company and customer expect an initial response to be provided within 30 minutes? It appears to me that the company are attempting to offer the level of support some companies use a 24/7 NOC (Network Operations Centre) to provide (e.g. the OP's company are trying to do it on the cheap)

I do know of companies that structure support operations similarly but it's essential that a Senior Network Engineer is at least on call. They could structure this whereby a junior has to respond initially and resolve issues where possible with a senior guy available to call on if required. On-call rates (and life impact as the senior guy would have less stringent response time and should be called on less, much of his support could/should be telephone based to the junior) could be structured accordingly.


In a nutshell: I wouldn't take what they're offering as it sounds sh*te but with one guy on call at at time why should the company pay you more just 'cos you're senior?

We do have a NOC, so they do some, often crap, attempts at looking at a problem. Depends on the quality of person on shift.

The NOC escalate cases to the on duty engineer, who 99% of the time will solve the case, or know what to do and which 3rd parties to contact to initiate resolution.

There must be a minimum of 4 people on the duty team, which ironically is the level we are at now; they need me stay on the team.

I have a major meeting tomorrow with a manager to propose a resolution, so I will have to just make something up quickly.

My preference would to either ask for £1000 per week or £500 plus an hourly minimum call out, which is a percentage of my equivalent daily pay.

This is business, I work for money, so I should get an appropriate pay and structured time off for doing an on duty rota.

As mentioned, I work in a different city to which I spend weekends in, except when I will be on duty, when I must stay in the working city.

I deserve more, because of this personally, but ultimately because it's not worth it to me to do this for £500.

It pays the juniors' mortgage, and is a large percentage of their salary, but they are less capable.

The company is trying to do this 'on the cheap.'

[Bluespider]

Hi MrRobin.


We do have a NOC, but 80% of them are not very clued up.

Thats a fundamental issue, and not necessarily your responsibility to cover (unless you are responsible for training)

I think the main issue here is that most on here will answer fromn a contractors viewpoint, i.e. we get paid for what we work. agreed up front and remunerated accordingly. As a permie the rules are slightly different and negotiations not as easy.
Will this hamper your career progression if you decline ( I know i have been told in the past that it was part of my job and therefore like it or lump it). If they have anly recently introduced this then there should have been a 4 week notice period and a new contract issued stating the terms.

Only you can decide if the money on offer adequately covers your time and inconvenience. I think due to the taxation levels and the fact that all parties get equal then it wont be worth it. you are essentially doing the same job as the juniors for less money. you may as well ask for a demotion!
In my experience though, once decided these rates arent very easily shifted. the companies dig their heels in on this for some reason.

[NetworkEngineer]

Sorry if this was answered already... I have been skim reading...

We've established that you get £500 extra for being on-call for a full 7 days. If you get called at say 3am, do you then charge for overtime on top?

Hi MrRobin.

Regardless of the time of the call, nothing extra is paid. We have been told we can come in later in the morning, but this time would not equal the time we worked during the night.

ie: work 3 hours in the midnight hours, expected in the office at 10am rather than 9am.

If anything; it should surely be overtime at "time and a half".

One person must be on call for a full week, not negotiable.

We do have a NOC, but 80% of them are not very clued up.

[monkeyrhythm]

I also work in networking (although I do more architecture than engineering nowadays) and I think that the support model of the OP's company is fundamentally flawed. Yes the business can apparently fill the on-call requirement by juniors who will be very happy with £500 for a weeks on-call but what happens when it all kicks off with a bitch of an issue that the junior can't resolve, who do they escalate it too? Am I reading it correctly that there is one individual, representing one line of support (first/second line if it's a junior) 'out of hours' - which in actuality is more than 50% of the time? Additionally the support company and customer expect an initial response to be provided within 30 minutes? It appears to me that the company are attempting to offer the level of support some companies use a 24/7 NOC (Network Operations Centre) to provide (e.g. the OP's company are trying to do it on the cheap)

I do know of companies that structure support operations similarly but it's essential that a Senior Network Engineer is at least on call. They could structure this whereby a junior has to respond initially and resolve issues where possible with a senior guy available to call on if required. On-call rates (and life impact as the senior guy would have less stringent response time and should be called on less, much of his support could/should be telephone based to the junior) could be structured accordingly.


In a nutshell: I wouldn't take what they're offering as it sounds sh*te but with one guy on call at at time why should the company pay you more just 'cos you're senior?

[SueEllen]

Some of these responses aren't helpful; I'm not a junior.

I'm a senior on £47k, so I don't see how, in what world, £500 plus nothing else is fine. For a 24/7 interational network criticial environment, I don't see how £500 can be seen as enough, personally.

In addition, everybody, regardless of status, gets the same money. If you would accept this, you would have to be either desperate or crazy.

The reason for Wanderer's and monobrow's view is that employment contracts are negotiable from the beginning.

This means when you took on the job or when they asked you to do this, you should have convinced them that as you are senior and more experienced you should only do on-call work at certain times i.e. when one of the junior bods can't cope.

While from your side the amount of money you get isn't worth it for you, for your employer they can get someone who would happily take the money to do it, so why should they pay more?

[MrRobin]

Sorry if this was answered already... I have been skim reading...

We've established that you get £500 extra for being on-call for a full 7 days. If you get called at say 3am, do you then charge for overtime on top?

[NetworkEngineer]

Perhaps it doesn't seem generous to me and you, but in the olden days when I was a lowly paid junior I would have jumped at the chance to double my gross income by being on call. You can get a lot of Vaseline for that much money...

Some of these responses aren't helpful; I'm not a junior.

I'm a senior on £47k, so I don't see how, in what world, £500 plus nothing else is fine. For a 24/7 interational network criticial environment, I don't see how £500 can be seen as enough, personally.

In addition, everybody, regardless of status, gets the same money. If you would accept this, you would have to be either desperate or crazy.

[Wanderer]

No it's not generous, it's a pain in the ass.

Perhaps it doesn't seem generous to me and you, but in the olden days when I was a lowly paid junior I would have jumped at the chance to double my gross income by being on call. You can get a lot of Vaseline for that much money...

[SueEllen]

£500 a week is aboove average in my opinion.

if you don't want to do it, then don't sign up for it, they can't force you to. If you have already signed, then tough, you need to find another job.

HTH, welcome to being a grown up.

Harsh but fair.

[monobrow]

£500 a week is aboove average in my opinion.

if you don't want to do it, then don't sign up for it, they can't force you to. If you have already signed, then tough, you need to find another job.

HTH, welcome to being a grown up.