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Re:Production-Oriented Development by OJFord on Saturday November 21, 2020 @01:42PM (#25171724)
Not 24/7/52, on a rota. And paid. It doesn't mean no work-life balance, it means part of the work is being available when on-call (limited 'life'), and life as normal when not.

It's hardly some horrendous controversial idea, nor unique to software engineering.

Re:Production-Oriented Development by ThePadawan on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:15PM (#25171977)
Right.

At several places I worked (and others for which I asked in job interviews), the general amount which companies get away with (and employees find bearable) seems to be <= 5 weeks of on-call per employee and year.

And obviously you're being paid to be on standby, and then paid for your overtime should an incident occur.

Re:Production-Oriented Development by burade on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:23PM (#25172058)
Are construction workers on call for the buildings they build? Maybe. But they'll be called like once every 5 years. Because their industry actually has standards.

Devs think they're hot stuff, when in reality we're probably one of the most abused professions out there. (I'm talking about regular devs, not people who were born in wealth/went to good schools etc)

Re:Production-Oriented Development by OJFord on Sunday November 22, 2020 @06:51AM (#25176739)
While they're building, yes there are absolutely people on call for issues on the site out of hours.

At my former employer I was on an on-call rotation; I'm obviously not now it's a 'former' employer, so the building analogy doesn't really hold up. (And not just leaving the company, but e.g. my former colleagues now working on something else at the same company aren't on call for the software they wrote but are no longer responsible for.)

Re:Production-Oriented Development by user5994461 on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:02PM (#25171877)
>>> And paid

The article did not mention anything about pay or compensation for oncall.

Re:Production-Oriented Development by bdcravens on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:11PM (#25171949)
The article also didn't mention whether you are notified via email, SMS, or Slack; that seems like detail handled by the business.
Re:Production-Oriented Development by yawaramin on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:20PM (#25172030)
When it comes to money, that is a rather important 'detail'. Especially given the fact that the most prevalent form of theft is wage theft: https://www.gq.com/story/wage-theft
Re:Production-Oriented Development by bdcravens on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:32PM (#25172156)
For the purposes of the article, that's still a business concern. Presumably on-call expectations are part of the compensation agreement. (as they are with most industries)
Re:Production-Oriented Development by user5994461 on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:40PM (#25172216)
I can't think of a single job/interview/offer where the expectations or the compensation for on call were discussed formally, let alone agreed.

The best I get in job interviews is usually a mention that there is a rota every X period. Then have to poke interviewers trying to guess what is it like without coming up as too negative, "when is the last time you worked on a week end?" "when is the last time you were awaken in the middle of the night?"