IT on call - What does everyone get paid

Caporegime
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1 week on and 1 week off is crazy. If the other person is off for their week do you end up doing 3 weeks straight?

Surely that depends on the number of calls expected etc.. I think the CS managers at a place I used to work at essentially swapped the on call between each other, 1 week on 1 week off. Though their teams provided 24/7 coverage and they were just called if someone needed to escalate. IIRC they just got some token payment like £50 a day, which I guess over 26 weeks each is circa 10k per year. Some weeks they might never be called, their job was just to coordinate stuff while the tech support bods and anyone else they might need were trying to fix the issue.
 
Caporegime
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so where do you get your legally required 48hr straight break every 14 days?

It can be 24 hours in 7, doesn't need to be a whole 48 hours. I guess it depends on how frequently the calls/escalations are likely to occur... you could have very low odds of it ever actually breaching the regs and not having a 24 hour period free. If the unlikely does occur then take a day or part day in lieu or someone senior needs to step in for a day.

Like for some reason you've been called all weekend then don't get any calls from Sunday afternoon onwards... well don't turn up to work until Monday afternoon and you're sorted.
 
Soldato
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Nothing to do with IT but when a courier I was on call 1 in 4 weeks and could drive anywhere in the UK. My boss thought an extra pound an hour on top of normal hourly rate was ample recompense for getting you out of bed to drive to Birmingham and back from Edinburgh.
 
Don
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£15 per evening from 6pm to 10pm (Mon to Fri)
£50 per day for Sat/Sun (8am to 10pm)
If you get called and need to come in, it's 3 hours pay for each 3 hour slot. (eg, 3 hours and 10 mins call out = 6 hours).

If you get called outside of those hours, then it's 3 hours pay just for being called. Double rate if you need to come in. So taking a call at 10:15 PM and you come in for 3 hours, 10 minutes. You call it 6 hours, then double it to 12 hours. Plus if this was a weeknight, or Sunday, you'd be in work the next day too.

Being on call sucks, but it's a necessity with many businesses.
 
Caporegime
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Hah. Turns out I'm not actually as motivated by money as I thought back then. There's a fair few sacrifices you have to make to chase money. Or put another way, you have to really want it.

You don't really need to chase money to get the goal you were after though that would be one way of going after it if you wanted to do so with no qualifications. I did mention years ago at the start of that thread that just doing something for the money would be a bad idea. Getting a qualification and doing well in a field you enjoy working in could get you a nice salary as a side effect regardless.
 
Caporegime
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You don't really need to chase money to get the goal you were after though that would be one way of going after it if you wanted to do so with no qualifications. I did mention years ago at the start of that thread that just doing something for the money would be a bad idea. Getting a qualification and doing well in a field you enjoy working in could get you a nice salary as a side effect regardless.
I think you're right, btw. Just need to find something I enjoy then :p
 
Soldato
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18 Nov 2011
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Caddington
My last place was
1 week in 4
£50 a day flat rate, 1.5x an hour after the first hour before 10pm then 2x an hour until 6am. BH and Sunday were 2x as standard.

My current place
Nothing, It is expected that you work out of hours and get nothing if you work less than 4 hours. I have never worked on-call or out of hours work since I have been here because I do not work for nothing.
 
Don
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£15 per evening from 6pm to 10pm (Mon to Fri)
£50 per day for Sat/Sun (8am to 10pm)
If you get called and need to come in, it's 3 hours pay for each 3 hour slot. (eg, 3 hours and 10 mins call out = 6 hours).

If you get called outside of those hours, then it's 3 hours pay just for being called. Double rate if you need to come in. So taking a call at 10:15 PM and you come in for 3 hours, 10 minutes. You call it 6 hours, then double it to 12 hours. Plus if this was a weeknight, or Sunday, you'd be in work the next day too.

Being on call sucks, but it's a necessity with many businesses.

not many 2h 50 calls then? :p
 
Don
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21 Oct 2002
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46,744
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Parts Unknown
My last place was
1 week in 4
£50 a day flat rate, 1.5x an hour after the first hour before 10pm then 2x an hour until 6am. BH and Sunday were 2x as standard.

My current place
Nothing, It is expected that you work out of hours and get nothing if you work less than 4 hours. I have never worked on-call or out of hours work since I have been here because I do not work for nothing.

That's quite a contrast, going from awesome to taking the mick
 
Soldato
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Nottingham
1 week on and 1 week off is crazy. If the other person is off for their week do you end up doing 3 weeks straight?

There was a time when I did one week in one for about 3 years ... there was someone who could cover for a week if I was off but fortunately we tended to get one call every 2 months or so. Even so it takes its toll. In the end I forced it by taking three weeks leave which meant they had to sort things out properly at which point I came off oncall entirely and left the role.

so where do you get your legally required 48hr straight break every 14 days?

hahahahaha
 
Soldato
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Caddington
That's quite a contrast, going from awesome to taking the mick
UK based company vs USA based company.

Hourly seems to be the norm over there with very few of them being salaried. If you are hourly you get paid overtime, Travel pay I.E you are paid your hourly rate for every hour you are travelling FOR work I.E to another state\country. I am salaried so as far as they are concerned my entire package is wrapped up into my salary. We have an "agreement" that if I work more than 4 hours on a weekend or bank holiday they will give me time off in lieu or something but part of that agreement was they had to give me 4-6 weeks notice at a minimum of any out of hours work due to having a busy life. So far I have done zero weekend work.
 
Caporegime
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Liverpool -> London
So I guess the heady 80s and 90s down in the sub-basements of financial firms across the city of London are long gone...
In the first place I worked it was double time for any days you got called in and you opted in to the rota if you wanted to get some of it - most did of course. Bank holidays and when they were stuck were 3x on an already good wage. Even then most went to the pub as it was just in case of emergencies. Two of the shift leaders retired around the age of 35 on a hefty whack as I recall, just through doing a basic Computer Operators job on mainframes. Funnily enough, when the company got bought out later on everyone had to reapply for their jobs which were at half the salary or less. I'd buggered off to do contracting by then but it used to make me laugh that some of them thought they'd be on 60-70k for doing sweet Fanny Adam for the rest of their lives.
 
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