We are a specialized firm so literally nobody else can do what we do and we have to get called in when there is a problem. That said, in other orgs I ran or was in prior to this current one we had “on-call” and “escalation” schedules that guaranteed time off to anyone not on the schedule. If you needed to be brought in off schedule you would be compensated a bonus at 3x hourly (calculated as yearly salary ÷ 640) and be removed from your next schedule rotation. If this was a recurring issue with a particular employee’s skill set, redundancy was added to that position. It wasn’t a perfect system but at least there was an effort made.
Yes. This is how most shops are now, but it didn’t use to be that way. The tech industry has gone from trying to hire and hoard all qualified personnel in order to beat out the competition to trying to see how thin they can run and what is the bottom set of qualifications they can get away with before things start breaking down.
Sounds like good management. I’ve never worked in an IT shop that was run like that. Best I’ve ever seen was ‘free comp time’ if you had to pull an all-nighter or work on a weekend.
I have always worked with critical production environments where things have to stay up. It is not sustainable with a skeleton crew. Eventually it leads to service degradation or instability which is far more expensive than adding redundancy. Something bites management in the ass once or twice and they get the message.
have always worked with critical production environments where things have to stay up.
Me too, they just expected us to work 100 hours a week when something broke.
I’m 25 years into my career now and know enough these days to say “no” when they ask for unreasonable things like that. It can sit broken for all I care.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
We are a specialized firm so literally nobody else can do what we do and we have to get called in when there is a problem. That said, in other orgs I ran or was in prior to this current one we had “on-call” and “escalation” schedules that guaranteed time off to anyone not on the schedule. If you needed to be brought in off schedule you would be compensated a bonus at 3x hourly (calculated as yearly salary ÷ 640) and be removed from your next schedule rotation. If this was a recurring issue with a particular employee’s skill set, redundancy was added to that position. It wasn’t a perfect system but at least there was an effort made.
Boozilla@lemmy.world 2 years ago
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
Yes. This is how most shops are now, but it didn’t use to be that way. The tech industry has gone from trying to hire and hoard all qualified personnel in order to beat out the competition to trying to see how thin they can run and what is the bottom set of qualifications they can get away with before things start breaking down.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Sounds like good management. I’ve never worked in an IT shop that was run like that. Best I’ve ever seen was ‘free comp time’ if you had to pull an all-nighter or work on a weekend.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
I have always worked with critical production environments where things have to stay up. It is not sustainable with a skeleton crew. Eventually it leads to service degradation or instability which is far more expensive than adding redundancy. Something bites management in the ass once or twice and they get the message.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Me too, they just expected us to work 100 hours a week when something broke.
I’m 25 years into my career now and know enough these days to say “no” when they ask for unreasonable things like that. It can sit broken for all I care.