Work related B#B#B#B#B#B#B#B#B#B#B#B# $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[someone_4]

Ok this is intresting ..
All I can say is from my side as being on call and working. Our work week is 40 hours. Then on call .. for on call sometimes something takes 5 minutes and sometimes it takes 5 hours. Now my thing is if it takes 10 min to fix something but they call at 3 am. And then you cant go to sleep till 4am and the rest of your day you feel like crap. What do you charge for? Then I have times where I spend my free time just working. So what it comes down to is what is someones time worth. How much is a bad day worth for being woken up and not able to go to sleep. What about when you are with your woman and you have to break away cuss the phone rings. How much is all this really worth? I dont have kids but what if you have kids .. an on call phone can really shake everything up.But what is fair ?

Richard

[Justo Exposito]

Hi Evereybody,

I'm reading the answers and I am thinking that is very hard your work conditions.

This is the new economy? I want the old.

Regards,

Justo.

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi Justo.

La ayuda de Unix en un ambiente de 24/7/365 es dura, pues la compa????a espera que el negocio sea el 100% %100 disponibles del tiempo.

Los muchos de diversi??n pueden ser tenidos tan en intentar realizar cambios al sistema operativo.

Qu?? lo hacen usted hace eso es tan f??cil?

;^)
Paula


Hi Justo.

Unix support in a 24/7/365 environment is hard, as the company expects the business to be 100% available %100 of the time. So a lot of fun can be had in trying to make changes to the operating system.

What do you do that is so easy?

;^)
Paula

[harry d brown jr]

Are you kidding me? We get paid in pennies, and you are talking about dollars? Got any opennings?

For internal calls (our company) we do/did this:
A flat fee for being on call (on call being outside your normal working hours, which for some its outside of 8am-5pm), say $50, then a fixed rate per call at $15, unless that call goes on for more than two hours or crosses into another zone (a zone is like 8am-5pm, 5pm-9pm, 9pm-12mid, 12mid-3am, 3am-8am) then we added another $15.

If you weren't on call, but got one from anyway's - 'cause you are the expert, then you received $50.

For true client calls:
a flat rate of $150 an hour with a 3 hour minimum, so $450, with 1/2 going to person on call - providing that the call is billable back to client - ie client screwed up, hardware failed, OS failure, or third party software failed. If it was our software, then we received $50. This forced us to fix our bad application code, so that the failures were normally limited to REAL BILLABLE hours. I got $$$ signs in my eyes...

Normally we would get anywhere from a few thousand to over 6k a year.


Tell them to raise your salaries by 25%, give you laptop's, company paid cell phones (even for reasonable personal use), a network and printer at home, cable modem, network, with the company furnishing (paying for) the necessary equipment, and a room rental (for occupying the space in your flat / apartment / house / trailer / cabin / pickup truck / tent / prison cell.


live free or die ----> and take as much money from them as possible!

harry

[fg_1]

Paula

At our company, we get paid a rate which is 125% of our hourly rate for the time we are on-call with a 2hour minimum charge per call (even if the call is 5 minutes).

The caveat to this is that for the time we are on-call we actually have to go and be on-site at the client versus having the luxury of dialing in.

The good to this is that we are also charging them for travel time to and from the site, thus the 2hour minimum.

Good luck and squeeze them for all their worth.

FG.

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Paula,

In my last job it was left to the manager's discretion how to handle comp time for being on call. Notice I said comp time, not call pay. All SAs were salaried and exempt (I think that just means exempt from receiving overtime pay). So when we were on call (12x7) we would get a day (or 2) for "R&R". That's mainly because we had to be working during our call shift (including the weekend). Hopefully we were able to take that time off but not always. And when we weren't on call we were still subject to being paged (with a pager we were expected to wear even though we weren't on call).

We did get 3% of our base salary tacked on because they figured out that 3% of the time (24x7x365) we were on call during evening hours and weekends and the company did pay a shift premium. That only happened after some SAs complained to HR.

In my current job I don't get paid for on call. I'm basically on call always but thankfully I don't get called often (small shop). When I do work a issue, my manager is good to work with me on my schedule though there is no official policy. That's the way it was with jobs I had earlier in my career as well.

Darrell

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi
Some more info on our "on Call"

We are in a 24/7/365 business (Travel).

Our connectivity is to country wide travel agents and Airport desks.

So when on call we are on call 25/7 - one week at a time.

It is not uncommon to get a call at 02:00 from an airport desk.

Also during weekend travel agents work Sat and Sun (shopping malls) so call at weekend are also not uncommon.

Company requirements :-

1. Sober
2. With 90 min to site.
3. Mobile phone on 24/7 and with signal.
4. Carry laptop at all times.

As one person does not hold all skill sets it is expected that persons not on call will assist 24/7 if called.

So what is being this available worth?

What is getting up at 02:00 to fix a problem worth

Paula

[Mark Greene_1]

Our work week is 40 hours. If you work over 40, but not on-call, that is tracked seperately (but not paid). The total number of "over 40" hours is then a factor into your annual bonus, if you get one. I've only been in this job a bit over 6 months, so I've yet to experience the later bit directly.

The on-call rotation we have right now is once every 4 weeks; pay is $2/hr for 16 hours during the week (cause you're getting paid for the 8 you are in the office) and 24 hours each Sat and Sun. If you get called and can deal with it over the phone or by dialing in, there's no extra. If you have to come in, then you get paid straight-time for that, minimum 2 hours, door-to-door.

The downside is there is no official compensation time. I have a flexable start time, but if I get called and am up 3 hours the night before, I am still expected to put in my 8 the next day and the 40 for the week.

HTH
mark

[John Payne_2]

Try this on for size...

40-55 hour work week.

I am only 'on-call' 1 week in 3 months. If anyone gets an HPUX call any other time when I am not 'on-call', then I get a call. When the operators get lonely at night, I get a call.

I get reimbursed if I have to drive in to work on a callout. I live 3 blocks from work, so I never posted the milage for the $2.50. I am an 'administrative' employee, so I get the same pay if I work 10 or 196 hours a week.

Here are the benefits: cable modem at home, desktop machine at home, laptop, wireless at work (good for boring meetings), cell, no pager (Thank Goodness!), palm pilot, and I can usually count on a meal or two on a bad callout and maybe a day off... (At least long enough to get a good 8 hours sleep.)

Oh yeah, and we are a University, so if something breaks, people are not breathing down my neck about the money were are losing... They just breath down my neck about the students that can not access a service.

All in all, I think I have an ok deal. (At least from what some of the posts say...)

[Alan Riggs]

Oh--and as long as I am pulling out the violin:

I have been on-call (with the exception of days that I spend vacation) every day for nearly 18 months.

I do get the occassional comp day from management, and nobody *ever* complains about what time I clock in in the morning.