Are You on Call? How are you Compensated?

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StarTrek4U

Gawd
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
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So here's the deal, I work at a relatively small company (right around 100 people) with an IT department of 6, three of us comprise the "on-call" rotation. That basically means that every 3rd week I'm on call, the vast majority of calls occur before 8pm (that's the latest anyone is at the office) and vary rarely will they occur sometime after 5:30am before I get in. My employer wants to pay me a premium of $50/wk when I'm on call, my problem is seeing as how I'm relatively new in the working world - I don't know if that's fair. For those of you who are on call how does it work for you? What type of expectations, etc do you have and what is considered typical compensation?

Thanks
 
I work for a payment processing center and I'm the only IT guy there is in the office. I'm on call every weekend and get paid only for the time I work. However most of the calls I get can be answered within 2-3 minutes or I can VPN from home and take care of the problem also within just a few minutes. There's nothing I can't do from home that I could do at the office.

I dunno about other companies, but $50 for the week your on call regardless if they use you or not sounds pretty good.
 
Well I have spent much of the last 2.5 years on call. When I started we recieved no compensation. For about the last 9 months we have started to receive $100 per week. (this was an everyother week rotation) Up until this week I was the only person on call recieving an extra $200 per week until I hired and trained replacements.

Now I am on call every 3rd week and get $100 extra. After I hire and train a 3rd 1st teir tech I will go into the 2nd level rotation and no longer receive any extra for being on call. 1st teir can expect at least a few call every week many in the weee hours of the morning.

2nd level are on call 24x7 for their are of specialization and recieve no extra cash.

Hope this makes sense.
 
From time to time I am on-call and I get paid 1 extra full day of work for it.

So last week I got paid for 5 normal days of work plus 1 day full day for my on-call duties during the week. Which is more or less 4 extra hours in the week.
 
I'm the only IT guy for a multi national (US & Italy) , multi-location (4 in US , 1 in Italy) company , 150 users or so.

I'm always on call :(

I get nothing for being on call 24/7 :cry:
 
I'm not technically on-call... but my employer's employer thinks I am. I don't get compensated.
 
zrac said:
I'm the only IT guy for a multi national (US & Italy) , multi-location (4 in US , 1 in Italy) company , 150 users or so.

I'm always on call :(

I get nothing for being on call 24/7 :cry:
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not quite so worldly, but I'm in the same boat.
almost 100 users, only IT guy, on call when they need me, zero compensation.
 
I'm basically on perma-call, along with one other admin in the same position. Due to our scheduling though, I only get about one or two calls per week (we work 21 hour/day coverage in a 4 man dept). I don't get compensated for coming in, but since they are paying me a good salary to start with, I can't complain.

VPN ftw. ;)
 
For the UHS Hospital I work for, I am on call and have to support over 250 end users, and I get no compenstation....
 
Just went to every 7th week, from every 5th week rotation. Supported about 400+ servers on the 5th week on call. Went to close to double that with the 7 week schedule. Over 700 servers. No outright compensation. We all get paid very well and treated extremely well. I've never heard anyone complain about being on call as it relates to finances for our group. Being on call yeah. It can suck, but the perks for my job are so over the top it's not even a slight issue or consideration when evaluating the job I have. On call will typically be resolved in the interview process. If its a new thing then for an existing employee then I would jsut say justify what it's worth in your mind. In the end it's about what you expect and think you deserve, vs. what the reality is and what you'll accept.
 
Heh...I'm on call 24x7.

Compensation? it's called salary.
 
I'm on call 24x7 on salary but I get paid pretty good so that's okay. Our level 1 people are hourly and rotate pager duty, they get double time for any calls they have to take over the weekend. I can't complain, I only get called maybe once a month or so now, and I can do everything from home (remote desktop/vpn) so it's not too bad.
 
I just started as a full time employee at a university library IT department. Our on call is twice per rotation (the number of admins x 2 = one rotation, around 10-12 wk rotations)
So I would be on call 2 weeks out of 12, and theres no extra compensation that I am aware of. I read earlier "its called salary" :D
 
Man 100 employees and 6 techs? You guys are lucky! We have close to 700 users and 15 Servers, only 3 sysadmins and 1 helpdesk person. We stay busy (24/7). We are always on call and the only compensation we get is comp time. Which I am not complaining... its better than nothing! Oh yeah... and they pay me very well.
 
Technically, im on call 24/7 though I rarely do get late night and weekend calls. Comphensation is called salary
 
I figure if they pay you a little extra to be on call great. Most people don't get paid anything but time. Some don't even get that if they are salary. One of my friends had a weird setup. He wa salary but for every hour he put in after hours during on call he could take 2 hours off a normal day. Worked ok unless he was busy then he couldn't get the time off.

I'm on call pretty much 24/7. Work for some consultants and I can get sent out pretty much anytime. For the most part this is not an issue as we don't get many calls at night since most people for the companies we work with work normal hours. The only stuff we do at night would like like server work or if we took a system home to work on. We have also done stuff like wiring at night. All I get is my normal hour rate. Our boss is pretty cool though. Last time I was working real late onsite with another guy we ended up having to redo some network drops and do a bunch of other stuff. Boss came over to help up some and bring us some dinner. The dinner helped a lot. Also my boss loves to do like lunch meetings since we can in theory go a few days without seeing each other. So at least once a week lunch is on him.
 
I'm "on call" occasionally. Its pretty much on a voluntary basis unless there's not enough people who volunteer.

One day on the weekend, i.e, just saturday or just sunday, 8am - 2pm, $500.

Work both days? $500 each day.

Work a holiday, like I did on labor day, $750.
 
About 400 network devices (not including servers or desktops. I'm just network) on call about 9 weeks out of the year. We get a "comp day" for each week on call. So you get one day off (typically taken the week after being on call) for being on call for the week. We had to all request it from our manager years ago when we were getting hammered on call. There is still no official policy.

At the time we were getting hammered, I was trying to find a industry benchmark, and it all seemed to revolve around 1 day. 1 days worth of pay + hourly if you have to come in. 1 day off per week on call, ETC. Things have changed since then, so you might want to see if there are any industry standards.

All of this depends on what you make and company policy. If there is no policy asking to get one is a good idea. We are paid well, but there are times where we make up for the comp time.

Quite frankly times have/are changing(d). I was sitting at a "global" IT meeting about a month ago ( video conference ) and they had a QA. Some one sent a question in about all the on call and overtime. The IT head and the entire audience at corporate (NY) actually laughed. This is a vary large company (read fortune 50) . It was rather disgusting. Sometime next year I am getting laid off, and I am actually glad.

I would ask, but I wouldn’t expect anything.
 
I work for a company that does IT outsourcing for various companies. I am on call pretty much 24/7. Though I rarely get called on off hours. Anytime past 40 hours for me is all overtime.
 
I'm on call 24/7 365. I get my hourly rate unless its overtime, then i get time and a half.
 
I run my own biz, so I'm on call 24/7. Back with the school, I was on call, didn't often get calls after hours, but when I did, they were always at the worst times.

In those cases, I billed from the moment I hung up the phone until I took my shoes off when I was done. Everything between those two points was outside of my control.
 
When I worked for a consulting company, if where I was contracted to had after hours support policy, it usually equated to an extra $50 per week for me, then if I got a call and had to go in it was time and a half with 1 hour minimum. If it was just a phone call and I could handle it over the phone, then I got nothing. I think I went in once at one site.

I once got a call while I was driving into the office for the morning. I was less than 10 minutes from the office when I got the call. Since I got to the office on time (7:00A.M.) I didn't get the 1 hour at time and a half.
 
gigabyte1024 said:
not quite so worldly, but I'm in the same boat.
almost 100 users, only IT guy, on call when they need me, zero compensation.
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About the same, except there's two of us. We rarely get calls though - most people don't bother us after hours knowing that they can get their problem fixed the next day. In fact, I've had to be in at midnight more times because of cooling/power failures than I have been called after hours by other employess (half dozen times over the past couple years). I don't count the occasional 2 minute call at 8 PM against that though. I don't get anything extra for it, but the rest of the project management staff doesn't get extra for overtime they work either (but I am subject to the same up to 20% bonus as they are :)
 
I am the / IT Manager/Enterprise administrator of the Americas for a world wide company. I look after over 400 system's in America/South America/Canada. I am on call 24/7
 
During the week 1 hour and weekends 2 hours pay for each day on call plus 10% premium for time worked outside of 9 to 5.
Not a bad deal except on holidays when the rest of the family/friends are partying and you get to be the designated driver :p
 
ktwebb said:
"if were I was at had after hours support"


wtf
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Yea, I wrote that while not 100% awake. I fixed it.

"if where I was contracted to had an afterhours support policy"
 
zrac said:
that's what happens when you do too much overtime :D
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Pretty much, I had just gotten woken up because something wasn't right. Turns out I had a DNS server down. So I had one domain that wasn't reachable. Not sure why the other domains were when they all use the same DNS servers.
 
-(Xyphox)- said:
I am the / IT Manager/Enterprise administrator of the Americas for a world wide company. I look after over 400 system's in America/South America/Canada. I am on call 24/7
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Uhhhhh part of the question was "how are you compensated".
 
moetop said:
Uhhhhh part of the question was "how are you compensated".
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Im in the same boat as the on call 24/7. My compensation is getting to keep my job. Being a net admin for a massive corporation its just part of the job. No extra perks for being on call 24/7, I just am if i want to make sure shit doesnt fubar.
 
on call 24/7, if I go in I get a day off during the week even if it takes 5 min
 
moetop said:
Uhhhhh part of the question was "how are you compensated".
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yeah forgot, i am compensated by my salary :D making 95K right now... though if you do the math for the amount of time i am here, its not much lol
 
-(Xyphox)- said:
yeah forgot, i am compensated by my salary :D making 95K right now... though if you do the math for the amount of time i am here, its not much lol
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It seems above a certin ammount they just expect it's included.
 
moetop said:
It seems above a certin ammount they just expect it's included.
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Yeah, but they also pay my cell phone bill and internet bill at home because i vpn from home also. So i guess that counts. oh and i get HUGE budgets :D :D
See my Cable Thread to see some of our network gear
 
4saken said:
Im in the same boat as the on call 24/7. My compensation is getting to keep my job. Being a net admin for a massive corporation its just part of the job. No extra perks for being on call 24/7, I just am if i want to make sure shit doesnt fubar.
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He's usually too busy patting himself on the back and/or telling tall tales in here to pay that much attention to the post.
 
I just started as on-call 24x7. Know how they pay me? I leave early or arrive late almost everyday. :) Teach them to not pay me for it!
 
Dood - $50 a week isn't a bad deal at all.. I get $0.00 for one week of on call - as do all of the various people within the groups that comprise the 350 people in IT. It's part of our job.. so I would be happy with $50 a week...
 
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