
Ask HN: Trying to prevent 24/7 on-call, please help - webappsecperson
I currently work in product development at a medium sized company where I&#x27;m routinely reminded (in paper and in action) that I can be called on to do anything, anytime, for this &quot;24&#x2F;7 organization&quot;.<p>Is this illegal? Is there any way that I can protect myself from this in future jobs? My official title is front-end and not SRE, but that doesn&#x27;t seem to matter.
======
AnimalMuppet
In action? You mean like, they routinely call you in at any time, 24/7? If
that's what you mean, leave.

In development, you get called in sometimes. It happens. At my current job,
it's happened _once_ (at 9 PM) in seven years. At previous jobs, it happened
more often. I accept it _as long as it 's rare_.

If it's all the time, it means the company is badly run - too much happens in
panic mode, not enough by regular operations. That's your cue to find a
company run by grownups.

~~~
CyberFonic
If staff don't push back at PHBs then they have only themselves to blame.
Voting with your feet is always an option.

------
davismwfl
So to the legality question, but please understand IANAL, the short answer is
no it is not illegal, at least in the US.

Regardless of whether you are a salaried worker or hourly, it is legal as long
as you are compensated for the time. Are there limits, sure and they vary
based on your exempt status. e.g. a Salaried worker isn't entitled to
overtime, unless certain conditions are met or violations present (certain
states have some varying rules too). Hourly workers it is actually easier, you
are paid OT for hours exceeding your normal FT schedule, in the US that
generally assumes 40 hours a week.

In the end, if the company requires it for your position you are on the hook
to show up and do the work. There are some state and federal rules, but in
general if you are compensated then they can ask you to do whatever. You can
vote with your feet and walk, but outside of that there isn't a huge amount
you can do to change it other then making sure shit doesn't break.

I ran a 24/7 shop that handled 911 calls and fire/ems dispatching, we started
with 2 people (including me) and grew from there. We all shared call duties
monthly, splitting it into the smallest increments that made sense. The
reality is we all cared and all busted ass to make sure shit didn't break, and
when it did we fixed it and took it personally. It wasn't just about the
people reporting the issue, it was for our own sanity.

------
seanwilson
I've heard of e.g. development teams of 10 where over 10 weeks each person is
on-call for one week to spread the burden around. I've worked in places where
a 24/7 support team would do this kind of thing (again, spreading the burden
between their team) so the developers were freed from it. If you literally are
on 24/7 call though I really can't think of what you could do about it except
renegotiate or leave as that sounds completely unreasonable and unsustainable
to me.

------
20yrs_no_equity
How to protect yourself in future jobs: \- See if they have devops people or
ops people. Pure ops is actually ideal. \- Ask them about their process, both
the design/development (eg: who makes issues, how is the product designed) and
the backend - who supports the customers, how are customer issues fed into the
development workflow.

If it's engineers supporting customers and on the spot to fix bugs, that will
be a red flag.

------
atmosx
Well, even SREs need to get some quality time, what you're describing is
living hell - like a startup environment not a corporate one, where you on
call 24/7 but you have either premium salary or a considerable amount of stock
options.

------
CyberFonic
The bottom line is that if you don't like the work, you can always leave and
find a job more suited to your expectations. I'm assuming you have discussed
the issue with your management. If not, then why not start with that?

I have worked in a role where I was on call at night. Often started work at
4am or working through the night. But I still only worked 50-60 hours a week
for a very good salary. The key for me was that communication was open and
both ways. I worked for a boss who was technically brilliant and a great
salesman too. And the team did share the unscheduled call-out work.

BTW: whey does everybody write 24/7? that's only like 3.429 in whatever units.
I think people mean 24x7 which is the total number of hours in a week.

~~~
wingerlang
They mean the same.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24/7_service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24/7_service)

