which also means that this should be time that is paid on some hourly rate for the lower quality of live during the on-call time.
Also, there should be a rotation, with enough people to make this bearable.
There should be no rotation; there should be no on-call in the first place. If hiring staff to work normal hours is too expensive for the company, then the company has bigger problems than a service going down.
And having at least one daytime rotation agree that "well, you're expected to be on-call during business hours on Saturday" isn't nearly as crazy as "you can't relax at any time during the weekend".
There are plenty of people who would be happy with that and plenty more who would accept that arrangement if it came with extra compensation.
Instead, particularly at big companies, people get hired with some generic comp. package and then it's luck of the draw whether you have an on-call rotation or not, and if you do whether it's onerous or not.
You can plan around it, assuming a reasonable oncall schedule. If its every other week, yeah screw that. If its a week out of 4, you can plan it and still have it better than virtually every other highly paid profession there is, and many low pay ones.
> My hours are 9-5, after that is entirely me time
Then maybe an hourly job is better than a salaried one... Of course, if you're not paid the part, it's not worth it. But if you're paid 150, 200k or more? I hope you're not expecting 9-5.
Speak for yourself, but I would never accept a $150k a year gig that expected me to be on-call, say, 1 week out of every 6. $150k is absolutely a "9-5 and stop thinking about work when you get home" kind of salary, if we're talking California standards
My hours are 9-5, after that is entirely me time and if you expect me to br contact able and in s state of contribute you're going to be disappointed.
No amount of money is worth losing that me time.