How Do Companies Pay for "On-Call" Support? 255
"We have an 'on call pager' that each worker carries for 7 days, about once every 13 weeks, and the pager is only used between the hours of 5PM and 8AM. The person on call gets paid $60 for the week. If paged, and the on call person can walk the user through thier problem over the phone or via remote dialup the on call person gets paid nothing. Regardles of how many times they get paged and can fix the problem over the phone, or via remote dialup, they still get paid nothing. If the on call person has to go on site, they get paid an additional $60. However if they have to go on site more than once, they are limited to only getting the additional $60 once.
Simply put, the call volume will increase dramatically, as well as the after hours work load, but the organization isn't volunteering to pay us more. I'm looking to inform managent that the people who are on call know that the industry pays better than they are getting for the same type of work. So, I'm soliciting to find out exactly what other companies do."
Send these until you get more $$$ for man power (Score:1)
To Whom it May Concern:
You are receiving this e-mail because we regret to inform you that due to lack of staffing we will be unable to attend to your after hours e-mail problem. If this problem persists you may contact the help desk via e-mail at help@mycompany.com between the hours of 8:00am-5:00pm. Please include your department, job title, name, phone number, and e-mail address, network id and a complete description of the problem. We will send you a confirmation e-mail with an anticipated date and time when one of our technicians will be able to assist you in correcting the problem.
Thank you
MyCompany Technical Support Team
Re:On Call (Score:1)
Overtime requiring a trip to work is paid at 1.5*salary, with a 3.33 hour minumum (ie 5 hours pay), payable at employee's option of salary or 'comp time'. Phone calls were generally handled casually, very few wrote them up.
Then a particular employee was getting LOTS of calls during a rough software transition period started writing up overtime for phone support, saying he would get it if he came in. And if he got two unrelated calls in a night, he wrote up two five-hour charges. This 'raised the issue', even though he took comp time.
The next time our bargaining unit contract came up, the issue of telephone support was raised, and not just for computer services. The agreement now amounts to "if the call is 15 minutes or less, it is not billable. If it's over 15 minutes, then the pay is 45 minutes or 1.5 * the time spent on the phone, whichever is longer."
This is a two-edged sword, though, because now people are more willing to write up overtime for phone support issues.
Doug
Re:IT Unions (Score:1)
Great. And if no one will hire you at your terms...STARVE!
Right way is to HIRE SOME FUCKING SUPPORT PEOPLE. (Score:2)
Afterwards, the night time support cell phone was rotated among the five programmers. No extra pay, just extra work every 5th week. Complaints were brushed off with the "salaried worker" excuse. And besides, we were told it was only "temporary" until new techs were hired. They never were. "Cost effective" I guess.
Well, pardon me for sounding like an arrogant bastard, but users should not have direct access to the programmers. I don't have the ability to bug Bill Gates 24/7 every time Windows GPFs. If fucking (l)users have problems, they need to talk to a dedicated tech support person, who logs and reports the problems. Then management can prioritize problems and assign programming staff to fix things. Yet company policy is to "never anger the user". You know, like saying "no" to them. Fuck that. User scum aren't my boss, they'd better not try to fucking tell me what to do and when to do it. After a while I took the the phone to the boss and said fuck you and your support phone too and walked out.
After I left I kept tabs on what went on. The phone was then given to a programmer one week out of every four now. As I expected, piss off factor grew. Sure enough, one more quit. Now one week in three was hell for the remaining. Then it all snowballed one day and all the programmers quit.
After that I don't know what happened. The company is still there so I guess they hired new staff. My guess is that the same shit will happen all over again. And looking back, it probably happened before too, as a great many programmers names could be found in comments scattered all through the source code comments, now including mine:
No offense, but that's ludicrous (Score:2)
I don't know your location, but I'd assume that the above number would usually range from $50 to $150 depending on all the standard salary factors.
This means that the proposed compensation, in return from never knowing whether or not you'll be forced to cancel your plans without any notice, possibly multiple times in a week, would be the same as they're willing to pay for between 45 minutes and 2 and a half hours of your regularly scheduled work time.
Obviously, this isn't very important to the person who is trying to get you to carry the pager. I'd treat it as such. If they insist that e-mail is mission critical, I'd insist that only the e-mail server be considered as such, and agree on software to monitor it for you. At least that way you won't get calls from people who can't figure out how to use Outlook.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Re:Their (Score:1)
Rip off. (Score:1)
Our on-call is as follows:
No fee for carrying the phone, but if called, the
rate is person's overtime rate (>US$100) per hour or part thereof.
Hence if a problem takes only five minutes, we still charge an hour.
You are lucky (Score:2)
If something breaks, I have to fix it or I get behind deadline.
I guess that is part of the problem of being your own support.
Others, that I know, have turned off the work cell phones on the weekend because they were getting nothing for being on call.
Be glad your company recognizes it but you should fight for better terms.
Re:But is it worth it? (Score:1)
Your last line summarized it, though. I love competition. I want to be the best. I want to propve to people that I can do anything, because I find that fun. Supporting a large piece of mission critical software can be a blast, it is a competition like any other to see how fast you can find the problem and fix it.
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Mike Mangino
Sr. Software Engineer, SubmitOrder.com
Re:But is it worth it? (Score:2)
How much do I get paid for this? 0 dollars. I make no extra money when I get paged. I do it because I want the system to work and I want our customers to get their packages as soon as possible.
It amazes me that it is rare to hear people complain about getting paged, even when they get paged 3 times a night (2:00am, 4:00 am and 6:00 am) 6 days during their on call rotation. The company is neat and we like what we do.
In short, if you are dedicated to the company and agree with the job that you are doing, you may not need to be paid extra to carry the pager.
If you are interested in seeing what we do, check out our website [submitorder.com]
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Mike Mangino
Sr. Software Engineer, SubmitOrder.com
Re:But is it worth it? (Score:2)
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Mike Mangino
Sr. Software Engineer, SubmitOrder.com
Re:But is it worth it? (Score:2)
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Mike Mangino
Sr. Software Engineer, SubmitOrder.com
Re:My Experience (Score:1)
Large telecom provider policy (Score:1)
Waged employees get a bonus of $125/week plus time worked for after-hours work. This can be counted towards overtime once a total of forty hours has been worked.
Salried employees used to be eligble for the $125/week bonus, but this was discontinued about a year ago. No bonus, and no overtime.
I'm not too angry about this, despite being a salaried worker.
Look, it's easy. Just say no. (Score:1)
If you want to do it then insist on double time for on call because after all, it's *your* life that they are taking over.
Key is a good accounting system (Score:1)
the best deal I ever had... (Score:1)
To be "on-call" meant carrying a pager. For every 8 on-call hours, I got paid one hour at my regular (salaried) rate. If I had to go to the office, it was an additional $100.
If you were on call 24x7, you got paid for 7 days instead of 5, a big fat 40% bump. People in my group fought to be on-call, we had to have a waiting list to carry the pager.
The pager rarely went off; I would love to have that deal again.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
$100 per week regardless (Score:1)
On Call Hours (Score:1)
For each day on call, I recieve $15.00 regardless of whether I was paged or not.
I get paid per hour regular rate for any work I need to do while on call if I can do it from home.
If I need to travel at all, I get paid for the miles, and a two hour minimum. So if I travel somewhere, and it takes me 5 minutes to fix, I get paid for 2 hours plus milage. If I work for 3 hours, then I get paid 3 hours.
It's not too bad, considering things work very well around here, and there are hardly any serious problems.
UK, 2 examples (Score:2)
my current setup (Score:1)
- record +2 hours to every on-call day
- any calls/pages are billed in
.25 hour increments
- you get to count transit time (but, of course, use the best available - you can't walk 60 miles and count it) [I generally just round to "fair" because I always forget to note it when I'm in-transit]
I am personally very happy with this arrangement. But then, I almost never get paged (maybe once a week, max, and I really wish it were more).I have a friend who, upon being paged, charged a 2-hour "base", and then "real time" past the first two hours. and, whenever on pager duty, he billed half-time. An impressive sca^Hheme if you can pull it off.
Re:my current setup (Score:1)
We _all_ have pagers (Score:2)
Then we have myself and our key network/mainframe guru on Skytel 2-way pagers, which we use to reply by e-mail as needed. We tell people to use the pager email addresses unless e-mail is down. That way we can usually attend to the issue with no phone call or trip required. Also, I get all the alert messages from our anti-virus system mailed to my pager - so it goes off a few times a day (I have a quiet time programmed into it).
When a crisis does happen, I'm first on the notification tree (I'm paid to be the boss, so I better be willing to back it up). If I can, I deal with it myself. If I can't, I call in whoever's appropriate. Basically, this drags in someone at a slightly off-hour a couple of times a year. I do all overnights myself if need be - again, it's a matter of being willing to walk the walk.
Our mainframe programming group (under a different manager) simply has a pager and laptop rotated to the on-call programmer. Each programmer gets a week on rotation where they need to deal with any issues that may arise when our batch jobs run at night. That's typically between 6-11PM. There are 8 programmers on the rotation, so they serve about a week every two months.
Neither of these generate any extra pay (neither for myself or my staff - we're all salaried) - but I give comp time pretty liberally if I have to drag one of my people into the office.
- -Josh Turiel
most places i've seen... (Score:1)
person on call gets a fixed amount per week (or weekend) usually around $100 flat.
for any calls received, the person gets paid at basically contractor rates for a minimum number of hours. I've often heard $75-$100 per hour for a minimum of 2 to 4 hours.
that said, it's been a few years since i've been on call personally.
-chris
The way to compensate fairly... (Score:2)
Um, no... (Score:1)
Any job that expects you to carry a pager for freee, even if you are salary, is bullshitting you. Quit as soon as you can find another job.
What my ex-company did... (Score:1)
What you're talking about is generally considered 'comp time' and according to my now ex-HR department they couldn't do that in the state of California due to conflicting state/federal laws. What we did though is have an unoffical-offical policy that at you could take a 3 day weekend (we rotated Th-Th) at the end of it so you had either Friday or Monday off. This was done under the table so as not to count against vaction/PTO.
I think this policy was actually pretty good (definately a lot better than $60)- if they had enough people qualified to do the rotation I think they would of had much better luck keeping people.
$60? You're lucky. (Score:2)
Depending on the number of techies, your pager-duty (which is 24x7) could be every other week or every fourth week. Typically, you work a full day each day for the full week and are also on-call for the entire world, except Asia. You're likely to be paged a few times and as much as a dozen on busy weeks. The average situation can last between an hour and 18 hours. I've been in situations where I worked a full work week, didn't sleep two of the week nights and spent 18 hours on a saturday and another 18 hours the next day (sunday) responding to an on-call page.
We found a web page on our internal servers that claims we're supposed to be paid what would equate to about $300+ per week that we're on call, which would come out to about $600 extra per month for each of us, but when we ask HR about it, they act like they've never heard of such a thing and think we're crazy.
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seumas.com
Re: Whoa! (Score:1)
I see. So I take it, then, that you expect the company that manufactured your car to fix it under warranty on demand, 24x7? How about the new house you bought?
For anything that the average person purchases, 24x7 support will cost quite a bit extra if it's even available at all. And equipment that you buy for the operation of your company usually requires the purchase of an expensive support contract in order to get 24x7 instant support.
Given all that, why exactly is the stuff you built any different? Are you being paid a whole lot extra to support your stuff 24x7? I suspect not.
I agree that you should do the best you can to build things right. So should the companies that manufacture the things we buy. But just as it's unreasonable to expect the companies that manufacture the things we buy to support their products 24x7 with a (say) 20 minute response time for free, it's also unreasonable to expect a salaried employee to carry a pager to support his systems (software or otherwise) 24x7 without paying him over an above his normal salary.
And before you mention how much such people normally make, keep this in mind: you're not being paid for the 24x7 support. You're being paid to produce a custom application, one that can't be sold in volume. Companies that create low-volume software charge each customer hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for their software, and often won't even provide 24x7 support for it without an additional service contract.
So why should you be any different, and why should the people that work for you be any different?
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Government On-Call (Score:1)
The pay works out to 1 hour of time for every 8 hours of standby (i.e. 2 hours a day during the week and three hours a day on the weekend/holiday), plus a _minimum_ of 3 hours at the appropriate overtime rate if we actually get called. That's time and a half or, rarely double time. The typical problem takes about 15-20 minutes to fix, from home. In rare occasions we actually need to get to the office to fix something (in which case we get paid travel costs).
We don't always bill for the trivial stuff, unless it inconveniences us.
c.
Comp day... (Score:1)
Of course, you would want to have folks working staggered shifts, so that the majority of calls can be caught by someone on duty, not the fellow at home with the family...
In the long run, this particular company may wind up saving money - and it will only cost you 1/5 of your average tech support persons salary - and it will be lost time, not increased charges for the company...
How this problem is dealt with sanely: (Score:2)
Handling out of hours problems (Score:1)
This is the type of work I handle. In fact, I am actually responsible for handling all alarming in a large worldwide organization.
I have held similiar positions in other companies as well. I can tell you how the big boys typically handle it and possible solutions.
In the companies that I have worked for operations continue 24 hours a day. Having an outage at 3am in the morning is the same as an outage at 2pm in the afternoon in the comapany's viewpoint.
Typically, if there is a high volume of mission critical applications running around the clock changing the support staff to a 24x7 schedule is generally preferred with the two off shifts receiving a 10% pay bonus.
Also, the people working the 24x7 shifts are the front line defense. They are there to deal with user problems, ie tier I and moderate application problems (tier 2) they do not get on-call pay.
Tier 3 people are paid around $12-$20 dollars a shift for being oncall. Not much money, ie for me $192.00 a week, but they seldom get called.
An important note, is that my current company requires employees to be hired temp to perm. Temp employees are paid a minimum of 1 hour of time anytime they are called, ie 3 calls 3 hours billable time.
My preference of course is to have a 24x7 team that can handle most problems so that I rarely get called. I have on-call 2 weeks out of every 6 currently, but have had it for 16 weeks solid in the past.
As for the number of calls you are getting, I have the following suggestions.
Get rid of the customer calls, this is better handled by a help desk. Help desk people are far less expensive than the actual techs working for you.
Build a customer problem website. Create a website that lay's out what to do about frequent problems. Note, this will help a little, but some people refuse to use printed documentation to fix their problems and they will still call. If you are in the business of support though, these customers should not be abused. That's just the way some people are and you are still there to serve the customer. But this website would be helpful to your help desk people as well.
Reduce problems. Currently, I watch over a couple of thousand systems and I have very few problems. Look into automating a lot of the problems that occur. There are several packages out there that let you monitor and take corrective actions automatically so that you just get an email in the morning about all the problems fixed.
I can offer suggestions on how to set up automation to help if you would like.
Hopefully this is of some help. This is the type of environment that I enjoy working in. Most companies are not willing to pay for it.
Lando
PS. If you are going to try to get the company to change it's policies, you will have to collect metrics on the number of problem calls and the amount of time you spend on them.
PSS. Try getting some comp time out of your boss for time spent on work outside of work hours.
You get paid for this? ;) (Score:1)
Their (Score:2)
Do you want the job or not? (Score:1)
Not to be too critical, but you're on-call for four weeks of the year and you get an extra $60 a week whether you get a call or not, and possibly an extra $120 if you go on site.
Whilst $60 may not be a lot, the on call component of your job isn't much of an extra load if you're only doing it for four weeks in the year.
You either want the job or you don't.
FedEx (Score:2)
I put "hourly rate" in quotes because most people in on-call positions are salaried.
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support sucks (Score:2)
Re:Inform them of the tradeoffs, and then get your (Score:1)
In my experience working in a union hospital, there was something that every PHB understood -- Someone carries a pager, they get paid per hour the pager is on. Someone works overtime, they get time-n-a-half. Someone gets called in when they were off, they get paid for 4 hours minimum.
This was on the health care side, so if your hospital is union, perhaps the bosses understand the situation all to well, and are perfectly happy to abuse the non-unionized techies. Usually, it's just too difficult for management to treat a small number of employees as a special case. Simple solution? Have the techies vote to join one of the hospital's unions.
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Calling someone to fix your email (Score:2)
Why would you call someone to fix your email after hours?? The only reason I can think of is that you have some urgent message to send ASAP. So you call a technician? Why not just call the person you needed to get the message to? Wouldn't that be faster for everyone?
On Call Compensation (Score:1)
$2.00 per hour just for carrying the pager
1.5X base rate for answering a call - Base rate being Salary / 2048
4 hours mininium for an answered call, no more than 8 hours a night for overtime, so no 3 calls=12 hours
If I was scheduled to leave the office at 5.00pm, and got a page at 5:01 it counted as an after hours page and I got the 4 hours
They were pretty cool, I just didn't get to write code there
Consultants (Score:1)
Perhaps we're comparing apples to oranges? (Score:1)
It's the latter that I was referring to. It appears, from the poster's description, that he knows the email system is unreliable, or has end-users who use support for questions best answered by referring to documentation. Also, I'd assume, this situation is beyond his direct control (ie: Management chose the email system and user training). In which case, my statement is still true - no matter how good a job he does, he'll still get the same number of pages due to those issues outside his realm of authority.
Rest assured, I did give my previous employer a chance to fix my situation before leaving. I asked for a simple promotion, in order to qualify for a higher salary which would compensate me for the additional workload. My manager declined, giving me some BS line about waiting a few more months... Right! One of the biggest pleasures of my career was announcing my resignation in a project meeting completely spur of the moment. I had nothing planned, no new job to start, just simply "enough". When asked where I was going next, my reply of "Not sure, haven't got to that detail yet!" was met with the most blank stare I've ever seen! hehe
But back on topic, I can agree that if you create something you should feel compelled to stand by it. I don't feel, however, that it's proper for an employer who doesn't give an IT Admin the authority to implement a robust system, complete with failover and redundency - along with a help desk to filter real IT problems from end user questions, the mandate to support the inferior system 24/7 without appropriate compensation.
Bottom line - if the CFO chose the crappy email system, let him/her get paged at 2am when the system barfs! When I come in the next morning, I'll remind once again why using Product ZYX like I had recommended would have let them sleep as soundly as I did.
Whoa! (Score:2)
Just because the email system may have failures 20 times a week does not necessarily mean the email admin is not doing thier job! The Company as a whole is responsible for that system. If someone up top decided a robust, stable system is too expensive - and purchases instead an instable one, that's the Company's fault - not mine!
I've worked in the past for a rather large company which had a subsidiary purchase a low-end, untested in large-scale environments, instable transaction processing system. It was then my job as the IT person to support it. This thing was a total piece of crap! I recommended multiple architectural changes to it to stabilize it and the vendor who developed it would shoot the idea down. Management sided with the vendor, after all - it was his system, not mine!
You can't possibly tell me that the above situation is an issue with me not doing my job correctly! After 3 months of that crap, I quit in frustration!
I don't care what hospital resident's work, that's not my business. If they're getting screwed, it's up to them to fix things. I'm not going to accept some other industry's curse being placed upon me for the simple reason that they accept it - so I must too.
Finally, if you were stupid enough to provide pager duty during your honeymoon - you deserve the divorce you're probably headed for.
There is a quote I've heard, and vehemently adhere to, although I don't know the originator to give proper credit...
I work to live, not live to work
On Call compensation (Score:1)
A coworker of mine is paid by the hour. When he is on call, he is paid $2.00/hour just to be on call. If he is called in, he gets paid a two hour minimum for each call. If the call exceeds two hours, he gets paid his normal hourly rate for everything beyond that.
Moneywise, we end up making about the same.
The standard way... (Score:5)
If your management isn't receptive enough to make a change in policy to compensate you fairly for this PITA job (i had to wear a pager for several months- fortunately didn't have to respond to it much), then I'd say you should find a way to get out of pager duties entirely or find a different place to work. One that'll pay you what you're worth.
(but is any amount of money worth giving up hours of precious sleep/coding time/bedtime-fun to step a user through making Lookout2k work at 11pm?)
Re:IT Unions (Score:1)
Re:IT Unions (Score:1)
I am swedish and I work in Sweden. Neither my employer nor I am affiliated with any union. My deal for taking customer calls on evenings and weekends is that if I get called at all I get one day off the next week for each call.
Oh, and I'm being payed for those days off. That means that I get 8 hours of salary for every call, plus normal salary for the time I spend taking the calls and handling the reported problems on nights and weekends.
Re: Whoa! (Score:2)
If you are so vital to the company that if you're not available when something goes wrong the company will fail to be able to do business... you are too vital.
There are two of me; me and a Bob unit. For our mission-critical systems, we are interchangeable. There are some specialized areas of the system where one of us is clearly better than the other but we both know enough to keep the system running in a pinch.
Redundancy is only part of the no-call on-call solution, however. Procedures and documentation are my other tools.
In my environment, we have computer operators but not a help desk. Our operators are trained in customer support, take user support calls and are low to mid-level technicians. They computer room is staffed 24/7. Eventually, they will become Matts and Bobs. In the meantime, they answer stupid user calls, learn the systems and fix what they can.
If I'm doing my job correctly, they should only have to get me out of bed once an event. After a problem develops, it is my responsibility to either fix it so it never happens again or document a workaround. Sometimes, both.
Thus, if tomorrow morning at 04:00 I get a call because the widget got hung up and crashed the dingbat, I've got to either prevent that from every happening again, automate a response so production is not affected or write a procedure so that if it happens again, the operators can fix it themselves.
Once again we're back to my original theory... I am substantially in control of how often I get paged on off-hours even though I'm required to carry a pager 24/7. If I'm doing my job, I don't get calls.
My guess is that I'm getting so much flack on this issue because there are a lot of shops out there were management has their heads in their respective buttocks. I'm finding it hard to believe that folks of our level are doing first level support after hours. That's insane. Further, I can't believe that in such a rabid labor market folks are putting up with it.
Before the tech labor market goes flat (as it's bound to sooner or later), y'all need to find solid places to work. Sure, there are a lot of places where you can get money firehosed at you but are they really the best place to work? I know I could double my salary by going to a startup. However, I like where I'm at because I don't have to put up with 20-30 pages a week. I've got computer operators running defense for me. I've got management that understands that time, like money, is a resource and it just doesn't magically appear.
If this thread does anything, I hope it opens some eyes. From the sounds of things, there are a lot of people out there getting screwed rectally without the benefit of lubrication. If you are one of those people, ask yourself if the problem is the on-call schedule or the company. If the answer is the latter, you better start looking for a new company.
InitZero
Suck it Up (Score:3)
I've worked for a number of newspapers in systems support. At all of them, I've been on call 24/7. In the past eight years, there hasn't been a single time that I didn't carry a pager. That include weekends, vacations and my honeymooon. During the day, I carry a two-way radio and most of the time I've got a cell phone. That's the nature of the beast.
I see the above as part of my job. The better I do my job, the fewer pages I get. When systems I'm responsible for break, it is my responsibility to fix them. Period. If I'm doing my job right, my after-hours calls are few and far between.
If you expect your mail server (Exchange, right? {grin}) to break 20 to 30 times a week, you are not doing your job. Your system is unstable. Your procedures are flawed. Your operators (or whatever group handles daily maintenance) are poorly trained. Something is horribly wrong. That is your problem. Not the on-call schedule's.
If you want to look at worker abuse, look not at the IT workers in your hospital, look at the residents. It's not uncommon for residents to work 80 hours or more a week. My aunt, a nurse, tells me that 20-hour shifts are expected. It's part of joining the Club Doctor.
InitZero
Re: Whoa! (Score:5)
After 3 months of that crap, I quit in infrustration!
As well you should have. I was working under the assumption that folks in an unworkable situation would move on to another job. What I got from the author was that the rest of the job was fine and the only problem was being on-call.
if you were stupid enough to provide pager duty during your honeymoon - you deserve the divorce you're probably headed for.
{grin} My wife, who works for the same company, brought her pager, too. We were gone two weeks and didn't get a single page. Before departure, we each thought about the problems that might arise in our respective departments and wrote procedures so that pages wouldn't be needed.
Would you hire a plumber that wouldn't warranty his work? If you spent $65,000 a year on a piece of software, wouldn't you want 24/7 support from the vendor?
I take great pride in my ability to do my job well. When I put together a server, I will stand behind the work I've done. I'm responsible for several mission-critical databases. If I have an hour of downtime between 18:00 and 01:00, there is a good chance that my newspaper will miss publishing. We haven't missed a single newspaper in 124 years.
We won't miss a day on my shift. My systems will not be what causes us to break a 124-year 'uptime'.
I stand by my earlier statements. I don't think any of us make minimum wage. If you're not making more than $20 an hour and are required to be on-call 24/7, maybe you have a complaint. However, if you're a typical IT worker grossing more than $40k and are required to carry a pager, I don't think you have a leg to stand on. It's part of your job.
If you are getting paged a lot such that it is interrupting your life, you need to look at what you can do to change the situation. Are you being called about the same problem over and over again? Do you have a procedure the help desk can follow? Have you automated failure detection and remediation? What have you done to fix the problems? If you can't change the situation, you may need to change jobs.
I see a pager as a warranty. If you're not willing to be on-call 24/7 to stand behind your work, I'm not sure I want you working for me or with me.
InitZero
Re:support sucks (Score:1)
Bill the cellular time to the company.
Camping is possible that way
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
SLA...SLA....SLA (Score:1)
I worked for a company that supported a major airline. Our SLA's were at least a decade old (mainframe days), but the customer expected us to uphold the SLA with newer, more complex systems. Did anyone else here go through GBIC hell on the old photon disk arrays? The company skimpped on high availability h/w, and had us by the throat with that outdated SLA.
Made for some long nights when you have to have 24X7 on faulty h/w. Made for a great many lost weekends.
It was the fault of MY management for not updating those SLA's. If you have it in your power to get an agreement signed, DO IT! It will be an uphill battle if you are already supporting a system, because people resist change, but you will be very thankful for putting the effort in.
Vacation: what most IT people get in the form of a check at the end of the year.
Unionize (Score:1)
--
Page the management (Score:3)
This is easy to do in our environment because the pages are generated by a trouble ticket system.
People are text paged on high or critical tickets. Managers are copied on all pages to people beneath them. Add it all up and yes, the CEO gets paged every couple of hours.
Paging the manager every time a tech gets paged is a great way to make sure that management is aware of the on-call work load.
Chris
Re:nothing extra! (Score:1)
Desktop issues are 8:30am to 5:30pm, period. If you have a desktop issue, that will not get handled by on-call. We have 24/7 Computer Operations (They get paid hourly), and they deal with most of the nightly issues, however if there is a problem with backups then someone is called. Or if one of the 24/7 websites is down.
However, when I started managing the Server teams I insisted on improved equipment for backups (AIT2 Libraries) and web servers (Clusters). This has GREATLY reduced the number of calls we receive. Plus, since we have extra equipment we can set limits to how many failures we have before we get called.
If we lose one tape drive, or one web server from a cluster, we get notified in the morning.
The only problem with this is, that by the time we get called, it's going to be something that requires us going in.
Depending on which team it is, it's generally 2 weeks on, 4 to 8 weeks off. When you are on-call you MUST be available, if not you must notify Computer Operations that you are out-of-area (Hey, emergencies happen), and I'm secondary on-call for all systems.
-- Keith Moore
Re:nothing extra! (Score:1)
-- Keith Moore
A Hospital You Say ? (Score:1)
(BTW: from what I've seen, a typical arrangement is to pay an hourly rate for the call plus a two-hour minimum at overtime rates if the employee has to come in. OTOH I was an administrator-on-call for years and never got a penny.)
Re:my current setup (Score:1)
So, hi. =)
Regards,
Re:nothing extra! (Score:2)
When you are paid to be on-call, you *MUST* be available.
Reality check. (Score:3)
a) An on-call fee that is reasonable. This need only be a fraction of their daily salary as if they are working, however, $60/week is rediculously low. Usually $50/day or something (provided the employee generally makes say, $150/day on a working day).
b) Time spent doing actual support should be paid at full wages, regardless of whether a trip in to the office is required or not. The 'on-call' fee is not supposed to compensate you for actual work done, only for keeping yourself available.
c) If you do have to go in, not only should wages be paid for work, but for the time driving to and from the site to solve the problem.
In short.. on-call fee is paid so that your time can become 'their time' on a moments notice. You give up some freedom in exchange for a fee.
If they decide to take that freedom and have you work, they shoudl pay you for it.
Here's how we do it... (Score:3)
That's better than our company (Score:2)
Then the extremely controlling senior tech (hi, Mike!) quit. Within weeks I was down to on call one week in thirteen, and instead of first level I was down to second level, and in some cases third level. Of course, I still don't get paid any extra.
To answer the question (in a pathetic attempt to get back on topic): get some quotes from third party companies to do the additional support you require. That gives you a figure to base your extra compensation on. I would recommend a fixed extra amount for oncall weeks, rather than trying anything per-incident, as the more complex you make your scheme the more loopholes there will be in it. I've seen companies where a pager would go off and half the department would get in their cars to drive to the office for the "having to go in" bonus.
As long as the problems are getting fixed (and you should make sure they are) it is in your interests to have them fixed from home. They get fixed quicker that way.
--
Re:That's better than our company (Score:2)
Right. That's why I keep getting arrested and thrown in jail, right?
Or maybe it's not theft at all, but an acceptable cost of doing business, that is absorbed by the people who do make the purchase. Have you never browsed in a store? Never followed a link to ebay [ebay.com] to look at the latest goofy thing being auctioned?
Maybe I should have them put it on Napster? Then it would be theft.
--
Re:Inform them of the tradeoffs, and then get your (Score:2)
In plain talk, if the clue-by-four doesn't work, find another job and let it be their problem.
Re:Send these until you get more $$$ for man power (Score:2)
Remember, this is healthcare: people will get sick and injured on distressingly inconvenient schedules. Also, the folks doing the real work (docs and nurses) are highly paid professionals that don't think twice about having to get up and do thier job at 3 AM two hours after pulling a long shift. (That's a legitimate reason, I think, why docs and nurses are entitled to big bucks. Lawyers are a mystery.)
In short, recognize that the work simply must be done, and if you are not up to it, your administration can and should find someone that is. I hate to say it, but if your management hired me to give an opinion on the circumstances as I understand them from your posting, my advice would be that their core business is healthcare, and the entire IT staff is hired help, and should understand that they either play with the team or "get traded."
Finally, like it or not, healthcare IT has never paid well and will never pay well compared to other industries, but it offers one of the most interesting and rewarding working environments in the world. (The average hospital has an IT complexity equivalent to a very large corporation.) If you're just after the bucks, you're certainly in the wrong place.
Oh, and remember: There is no indispensable man. [editcorp.com]
On Call (Score:3)
On-call pay (Score:2)
Procedures, and the help desk (Score:2)
I'm a programmer (Boo Hiss). Our HELP desk? You mean the ones that won't WON'T look at a help procedure? There is the slightest problem, they call us (Right down to resetting passwords). Their excuse? "I couldn't figure it out", or "The program wan't installed on my support PC"
The one that drove US nuts though was when the night LAN crew started reprogramming routers (without telling us), and DENIED it. A who segment's worth of users would call "We can't access the Database", but everyone else in the company was up. We check the router, and sure enough, there was a problem. An hour or so later it would go away. Next morning, we'd talk to the head LAN admin, and he'd say "We didn't have any problems, and nothing was done" - This went on for over a month. We finally set up our own logger. It seems that some night tech was doing it on his own, and when his boss asked, was saying "I didn't do anything"
AAARRRGGGHHHHH
Sorry for the vent, but 30 straight days of 2x/night calls sticks with you, even months later
Our approach: Cover and pay (Score:2)
Next, you need to figure out a way to compensate people for the extra time. One tactic that works quite well is to establish service levels and testing to monitor the service levels (e.g. you can monitor system uptime and then require that the system be up 99.8% of the time).
Once you have that in place, I recommend a quarterly bonus structure based on meeting the service levels. You get to answer questions like: how much? Do you pay for partial success? How do you measure things like "customer experience" and what constitutes downtime?
Re:Gender? (Score:2)
If person A is looking after their sick daughter, then it makes no difference if it's Alice or Alex, they have equal requirements. Similiarly if person B spends all their nights watching who wants to be a millionaire, it makes no difference if it's Betty or Brian.
However, I'd say that in most circumstances there should be no special consideration for family responsibilities. Anyone is entitiled to take a bit of time off, someone might be getting a new fridge delivered, someone else might be taking his daughter to the hospital. However, if the amount of time off gets exessive, it impacts their ability to do the job, and starts unfairly impacting their co-workers.
Another example (Score:2)
We used to have 2 rates which projects could choose, with different 'time to respond' and 'time to fix' times. Both were worked as 1-week-in-4 rotas, with pay dependent on whether you had to attend in person, the length of the callout (in a half-dozen bands or so) and whether it was unsociable hours (weekends, holidays). Both also paid a retainer independent of whether you were actually called out.
The system DID NOT WORK. People took on multiple rotas (not allowed - can you really provide emergency support in 2 places at once?), claimed for attendance when they dialled in, and didn't meet the tight targets imposed by the higher rate.
Now we have a single on call arrangement. Still 1 in 4, with an intermediate retainer, time to respond (to a pager, 30min?), time to fix (2hrs before fault escalates IIRC), a reduced number of call time bands (3 I think), identical rates whether you attend in person or not (more realistic now we can all dial in), unsociable hours still count.
Things do seem a little happier and more honest now, especially as the rates were not averaged but were put in as part of an inflationary adjustment, so they're closer to the old high-paying rate.
Our rates are actually fairly generous (now - they werent before) - the retainer and a few calls can easily add up to 15-20% of your pay - but we do have substantial out of hours support anyway so on-call only really happens when the shit really hits the fan.
The high cost of on-call rotas is passed on directly to the projects who ask for it, which tends to keep the number of rotas down. You can't just ask to get put on call.
Being an intern sucks, eh? (Score:2)
Yep, that system completely sucks. Yes, it's probably quite a bit of a "I had to do my time, now so should you." (kind like learning Scheme, IMHO). But you probably knew that going in, and once you're through the intern phase you'll never do it again.
Saying that you HAVE to go through that (and you don't....if you're a competant programmer you could do that for a living and make a quite nice salary) and that others should grow up isn't quite fair. If they all of a sudden told you, mid-way through your internship, that you'd have to start staying up every 4th night, you'd probably fight back quite seriously.
Re:Send these until you get more $$$ for man power (Score:2)
Inform them of the tradeoffs, and then get your CV (Score:5)
Explain to them that your people aren't robots/computers, and you can't just add load to them without changing something. Tell them that if they institute this policy, people WILL quit, and the cost of replacing them will be prohibitive.
But perhaps you should phrase it in an analogy that they can understand. Let's say that they have 100 beds in the hospital. Let's say that it's a VERY well-run hospital and they're running a 90% utilization rate. The hospital only covers non-emergency care (i.e. no Trauma ward in the ER). Now the hospital wants to start taking Trauma cases. Maybe the ER itself can handle it, but they probably don't have enough beds for the additional load. They probably don't have enough nurses, additional doctors, etc.
They can't make the decision to take trauma cases just based on the ER....they have to look at the WHOLE hospital's ability to handle the increased load.
The issue with additional 24-7 support of email is very similar. They can say that they're going to do it, but without providing additional resources, it can't actually be done. If they want to offer trauma care, they have to be able to handle the whole thing, add additional beds, nurses, etc. This is the same thing.
The problem is that the people you're dealing with probably don't understand it on the same level. They just think of services, and think that they can just add them for free.
The most difficult thing to do, but probably the correct one, is to have the person running the on-call program categorically refuse to do it. If you stand together, unless they just fire the lot of you (which they KNOW they won't do) you've got a lot of leverage there.
Make your best case. Speak logically, use analogies, use numbers. When all else fails, make blatant, explicit ultimatums and refusals. You wouldn't tell them how to run medical care, they shouldn't tell you how to run a support centre.
Re:Medicine (Score:2)
And for this you are paid.... $50k/yr? $75k/yr? $100k/yr? What?
The question of whether or not someone is being exploited rather depends on how much they're being paid, doesn't it?
Re:Um, no... (Score:2)
No, it depends on the job description. What the work week understanding is is.... whatever you agreed to. I think that people should have the right to negotiate for almost any terms to their employment contracts. If someone wants to agree to work a 40hr week, or a 50hr week, or a 30hr week, and they find an employer who agrees, why not?
The question of whether or not you're being exploited is then whether or not the employer is compensating you fairly (and whether or not you entered into the contract freely or under coercion, which is a separate issue). You get to decide for yourself if what you're getting for your contribution is fair. If you agree to a job with a default 40hr work week, but wind up working more hours without pay, well, you're getting screwed. If you agree to a job with a 60hr work week, and get the agreed upon compensation, then no injustice is happening -- your agreement to a crummy contract is not a crime.
A job which upfront specifies carrying a pager or being on call, and in return pays a salary of above market rate is hardly "carrying a pager for free".
IT Unions (Score:4)
Re:Calling someone to fix your email (Score:2)
Its called greed (Score:2)
The best part is this doesnt undermine our rights as workers, these people choose to enter shitty situations and prospective employees can shop around.
To get back on-topic this is a non-profit which when used properly an get volunteers to do all sorts of things, maybe even support. Or if money is especially tight you have to ask yourself which jobs are critical and which aren't and replace non-criticals with volunteers to pay for a decent support team. Either that or suffer.
One fair method, I think (Score:2)
We compensate people by paying them an extra day (8 hours) for each week on call at their current rate (everyone is salaried, so there's no easy way to pay them a multiple of current hourly rate.
There's not really differential compensation for what people do when they're on call but if it's really busy most managers give people comp time.
Does this seem fair?
Gender? (Score:2)
women are more likely to have family responsibilities (whether children or elderly, we rely, as a society, on women to take care of everyone). as a result, it may be more difficult for them to take care of on-call duties than it is for men.
does anyone work anywhere where on-call policies are sensitive to these sorts of considerations (not gender, specifically, obviously, but different amounts of time that different people spend on caring for family members)?
A real-life consulting company's pager policy (Score:2)
Let's say I get paged twice, and the first call takes 45 minutes and the second takes two hours. Three hours plus two pages plus one hour (rounded up) plus two hours. I get credit for eight billable hours.
(And yeah, that's considerably more than $120.)
Re:Send these until you get more $$$ for man power (Score:2)
24X7 Support (Score:3)
Generally, I've found non-profs are the worst to work for IT wise. It's almost as bad as a Co-op. Limited funding is always an issue. However, this being said I can add the following:
* There are plenty of places that offer outsource support by per minute prices. On the low side you can expect $1.50/Minute. If you have a lot of simple questions you get then this can work well.
A more cost effective measure is to hire a sudo technical person for second shift. Enough to take the heat off, and to be able to do simple tests to determine if the system is really down, or if it's a client issue.
* Being on call is one of the bains of the exempt employee status. It's not uncommon to only be offered comp time. On the other hand, it's not uncommon for an email admin in a 24X7 enviroment to get in the high 50K range as starting pay.
The problem with the wage comparison charts is that they rarely look at the pay ranges for people who work the long 24X7 hours.
Work based compensation is okay, but it doesn't factor in the stuff you can't do because you were tied to the pager.
* You should have the higher ups compare how much you're getting VS how much it would cost to outsource. Compare that to how much value the service you're offering is.
* Finally, if all else fails. It's a good IT market right now. Get a consulting job. Consultants are usually exempt for pager duty, and often you can tell your pimp upfront that you expect time and a half for all after hours works.
Re:Grizzled old Mainframer chimes in (Score:2)
Re:On Call (Score:2)
I don't know if this applies to salaried employees, though.
Don't put up with it! (Score:2)
I believe that if you are on-call, you *are* working -- you are not free to do as you please when you are on the electronic leash. While on call, you deserve to be paid *the* *same* *amount* you would be paid if you were sitting at your desk on-site waiting for service calls to come in.
I've learned from experience to ask during the job interview if any on-call time is required. Personally, I refuse to take jobs that want me to wear an electronic leash; but if I were to take one, I'd insist on being compensated for my time. My free time is MINE, damnit. I take a job on the understanding that they are paying me X amount of dollars for Y amount of work. You want more work, it's going to cost you -- either by me more or by paying a headhunter to find someone to replace me.
Re:$60?? (Score:2)
Take a different approach. (Score:2)
This not only solves your problem of tech staff being overwhelmed by on-call duties, but the manager of the help desk is then responsible for budget and staff increases as the responsibilities increase.
You're just experiencing growning pains. Remember, support needs always grow. I have never heard of a support organization shrink because the company involved dropped some troublesome technology. Sell this idea by telling management you're positioning yourself for the future.
If they balk at the expense, you can lease 24/7 support desk service from any number of vendors. And before you ask, yes, prompt service will suck if you don't spend the cash. Hey, it's that or lose the techies they've already got...
John
Disclaimer: Before you believe anything I write, remember that in the back of my mind my retirement depends on my company's stock doing well over the next 20-30 years.
Hourly or Salary (Score:2)
I didn't catch if you folks are getting paid hourly or if you're salaried employees. I worked at an ISP where the emergency pager was rotated around the staff (someone new got it every two weeks), and if the pager went off after hours the pager person was compensated for their time. Of course, we were all hourly employees so it was a bit easier.
At my last job (not the aforementioned ISP), our sysadmins had a rotating on-call schedule, so no one person was stuck answering all the "Server/Router Down" phone calls all the time. Usually, if someone was really stuck working late after hours, she would simply come in a few hours late the next day. It was a pretty good system: abusable, but with a small enough group and a decent manager, definitely workable.
In any case, your best bet is to sit down and talk with your manager and voice your concerns. Make your points calmly, yet firm. Let her know that you feel the volume of work is going to increase dramatically and that there should be a similar increase in compensation. Good luck.
--Mando
What? (Score:3)
Where the FUCK is my boss.
Brb.
Re:Consultants (Score:3)
I thought that was a cool idea.
My Experience (Score:5)
Re:On Call (Score:2)
If on call, we are paid 1/8th our wage while on call. Any call results in 3 hours overtime based on our contract. The way our contract works is this... first day of OT (say a Sat.) is 1.5, 2nd, 3rd, etc. are at 2.5*.
Its actually not a bad system. As the RAS administrator, I often get put on call when we have clients doing weekend demonstrations. We use RSA's SecurID tokens and a lot of users have trouble remembering exactly how to use them. So, I get a call that takes 5 mins, and get 3 hours overtime. However, if that call comes at 10:00, and I get another 5 min call at 12:00, I'm still only paid for the 3 hours OT (10:00 - 1:00).
I think this is a pretty fair way of doing things though. For having to carry my phone, I get paid, if I have to do anything, I get paid OT. Of course it doesn't differentiate between solving a problem over the phone, or having to come into the office (or the client site if they're in town), but generally speaking, it works pretty well. Especially over the Y2K thing... I was on call for 72 hours straight, phone didn't ring once, and I got paid for like 9 hours of work, well, okay I took it as comp time, but anyways.
Compensation at my former employer (Score:2)
At a former employer, I had similar after-hours responsibilities. I was on a pager rotation (1 week every 7). I was paid as follows:
$60 for each complete week on-call
Regular overtime for each phone call fielded, minimum one hour.
Regular overtime for on-site visits, minimum four hours.
Regular overtime means 1.5 regular rate after hours, double between 11pm-7am, double on Sundays and holidays.
Not a bad deal, really.
Re:Consultants vs employees (Score:2)
SO --
Consultants -
Being "on call" is being on the job. Every hour you are "on call" is an hour worked. That is what customer asked to you do. PERIOD.
Employees -
Hourly or Salary - the States have overtime limits were your employer is required to give people time rest. Being "on call" is being on the job. Every hour you work you are to be paid. Many full-time salaried employees have sued and won money of past MANORY over time pay.
Managers -
IF 7x24 is a requirement, staff 3 shifts 7 days a week. Every thing else is taking advange of your staff. If 5x18 is required, try flex time, alot of employees and consultants would love to come to work around noon, and others around 5am.
Hire the employee, don't abuse them.
Having been there... (Score:2)
But is it worth it? (Score:5)
It's like with leasing a home: I own my house because it's important enough to me that I want full control of it. It's the same with one's occupation: I don't want to lease my life; I want it to be my own life, and I don't want to have to answer to my boss unexpectedly at all hours of the day and night. It pains me to see so many people of my generation taking up the yoke of servile labor our grandparents and great grandparents fought so hard to unload. eighty-hour work weeks? Previous generations fought tooth and nail to get a ten-hour workday, and we undo their efforts in one fell swoop.
Re:Inform them of the tradeoffs, and then get your (Score:3)
Jeepmeister