The way "on-call" works...

Discussion in 'Employment & Jobs' started by slyuen, May 19, 2006.

  1. slyuen

    slyuen Byte Poster

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    Hi, just wondered if anyone could help me with this:

    A company which I am about to be interviewed in, needs its support staff to go on-call, i.e. going to another site to do maintenance work, etc.

    so how does this work? the guy mentioned about on-call allowances and something "per-hour" that he mentioned. Does it mean that I will earn extra that week if I have been to a call-out? or does that "allowance" only cover the train ticket and that's it? there is of coz a basic salary behind this...
     
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  2. JonnyMX

    JonnyMX Petabyte Poster

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    At the end of the day, it means they phone you in the middle of the night.

    If you are on call and nobody phones, it can pay out really well.

    But this is IT, and someone ALWAYS phones...
     
    Certifications: MCT, MCTS, i-Net+, CIW CI, Prince2, MSP, MCSD
  3. The_Geek

    The_Geek Megabyte Poster

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    You need to find out what all is covered during your on-call rotation.

    Where I work, we're on call for one week and we rotate out every three months. Not too bad to be on call only 4 times a year. We get a flat fee for being on call, plus OT if we get called.

    The good thing is usually someone else will take calls for you if you don't want to take it. Most everyone else likes the extra $$$.......personally I'll pass on the extra money knowing I'll get to sleep through the night.
     
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  4. Baba O'Riley

    Baba O'Riley Gigabyte Poster

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    I have to be on call roughly 1 weekend in 10, 0730-1830 on a Saturday and do a couple of hours monitoring on the Sunday morning (not on call). I get to work from home over the VPN and if no one calls me I will do maybe six hours work over the two days (doing stuff like monitoring backups and security events etc). For that, I get two full days off in Lieu which is a right cushty number. If no one calls or goes wrong it's a piece of p1ss.
     
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  5. Disco25

    Disco25 Bit Poster

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    I think my 'on-call' falls into what you've been told, i get a flate hourly rate for the whole time i'm on call, so if it's all week it's not bad, i'm also one of the lucky ones as i'm not on call over night :biggrin

    If i do get called i then get a call-out rate on top of the hourly rate for being on-call, the hourly rate is great but the call-out rate is where the real money is so if you get that you're laughing!

    Some places work differently but most guys i speak to usually work something very similar if not identical.
     
  6. Dogleg

    Dogleg New Member

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    The "on-call" where I used to work was on a wierd rota system.

    There were 8 of us in the rota and we used to do a nightly rota system. :rolleyes: The first night we were primary on-call (a set fee) and if we were called and were able to fix within the hour we couldn't charge for it! for every hour past the initial first hour we could charge overtime. :biggrin

    The second night we were secondary on-call. This meant that if the primary didn't respond within 15 minutes they contacted the next person.

    We were paged at all hours for any reason!

    Being on-call did add about another £200 to the monthly pay packet. So it wasn't all bad!!
     
  7. Sandy

    Sandy Ex-Member

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    How it works for me.

    We provide on call between 5pm and 10pm - I carry a pager, a laptop and a mobile. If site have a problem I get paged, use the phone to contact them and if nessary dial in from home via VPN.

    I am on call 1 week in 2 and get an additional percentage on my salary.
     

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