[polack]

We do Thursday to Thursday and then you get Friday off after completed on-call. Being on-call gives you no extra pay by itself, but if you get paged off hours and need to work you get paid 150 to 200% of your normal hourly wage depending on what time of day you need to work.

Best on-call I’ve had.

[einichi]

No pay for being on call by itself is still poor, particularly when it comes to swapping rotations between team members to provide flexibility amongst each other.

You’re making yourself available 24/7. That has a non trivial lifestyle impact which I’ve always thought deserves more than is typically rewarded.

[sokoloff]

As long as the on-call coverage is as specified at the time of hiring, this is just a difference in form of payment.

If I receive 100 total units of compensation, I'd way rather get 100 units of base pay (and 0 on-call pay) than 90 units of base pay and 10 units of specific on-call pay. (What if the company eliminates on-call? What if I get injured and my insurance only covers base pay? Severance is usually based only on base pay; I would not be paid on-call while I'm on PTO or other paid leave, annual raise percentages typically apply to base pay, etc...)

[zgeor]

Not to mention that there is incentive to keep having oncall pages, because that's how you get paid. Or not participate at all. On the other hand, with a flat payment, there is a big incentive to prevent issues and not have(reduce) ooh incidents, and participate in the rota.

[jxf]

In OP's case it sounds like they do get compensated with the day off, which is PTO. It's not a trade everyone would make but an extra day off into a long weekend is one I would have taken earlier in my career.

[larsrc]

+1! You can't travel very much, you can't go hiking or biking in places without cell coverage, your whatever thing you are busy with gets interrupted, you can get woken up in the middle of the night, etc etc. That deserves some compensation.

[makeitdouble]

The extra day off is probably equivalent to getting paid ? Last time I had on-call part of the job, I think the pay increase for standby would have amounted to roughly 8h as well (actual interventions were also 150% for regular nights and Saturday, 200% for Saturday night and Sunday)

Lugging around a laptop and the on-call phone when going anywhere, checking every now and then when the phone was not with your for a while (e.g. pool, gym etc), making sure you don't go places with no signal was enough of a PITA that knowing we were paid every hour of that had a nice psychological effect.

[mrweasel]

That's good the hear. We're currently redesigning our on-call and plan to make it Thursday to Thursday, and then Friday off.

[benhurmarcel]

> Being on-call gives you no extra pay by itself

If I’m not paid to be reachable, nobody gets to complain when I don’t pick up the phone though.