Ask HN: Any luck negotiating better terms for on-call?

Re:Ask HN: Any luck negotiating better terms for on-call? by dGhyb3dhd2F5 on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @05:16PM (#25651937)

My suggestion would be to take care of you health. There are companies that can afford to pay you for each and every extra hour of on-call, but they won't necessarily look for you well-being. Having extra time off sounds nice, but on the other hand it will affect the other stuff that you usually have to do at your job.

I was hit by on-call duty pretty hard at some point in my career. I was sleep deprived and was not able to execute on my regular tasks. This also lead me depression and increased my anxiety. Even though I've started to work on my issues with therapist, I was not able to recover and was let go.

Remember about taking care of yourself.

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Re:Ask HN: Any luck negotiating better terms for on-call? by ymnska on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @05:25PM (#25652045)

Thanks! I appreciate the thoughts, although it doesn't sound like I am as bad off as you were in this case.

I can hugely sympathize with on-call bleeding into other parts of your life/career though. One of the things I detest most about the current setup is that on-call is considered to be a 100% "extra" obligation. Even if you were up all night responding to pages, you are still expected to be back in your seat on time the next morning and working at full throttle. Unless it's a really outlying case, then no allowances are made on adjusting other expectations for the work you're doing outside of work hours.

It sounds like this is what happened to you. Sorry to hear it, and hope you found something better.

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Re:Ask HN: Any luck negotiating better terms for on-call? by wikibob on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @06:18PM (#25652620)

It being additional to normal work is not typical.

I would find a new job.

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