[spdionis]

Is it an US thing that on-call shifts are unpaid?

That is not common in Europe. Generous compensation and additional time off is quite typical for engineers handling on-call burdens.

[rawgabbit]

Yes it is.

At one company, I was technically on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week for over ten years. Did I get called that often? No. Did I get called at the worst possible moments? Yes.

[chipdart]

That's not a problem with the concept of being oncall. That's an entirely different problem that's not technical nor operational not industry-specific.