Yeah everyone,

i know there are a few I.T. guys and gals amongst us so i got a q about how much you get for being oncall. At my work the oncall rate is up for review as we are getting larger clients (national) that are 24/7 businesses. Currently we are $95 before tac ($65 after) with the expectation that you available to answer the phone at ALL times i.e. 11:30pm or 3am, if you miss a call you MUST call them back within 15minutes, must always have access to a computer for remote support. The initial rate was fine when it was best effort, but now these strict guide lines are in place, we have been askd to provide a "fair figure". Any work that is done after hours is time and a half, which is fine, just the oncall rate. Keep in mind this means cancel your week, no gym, no shops, no movies, no going out, no drinking, no nothing.

We (the tech's) are looking at $150 after tax for the week, keeping in mind we have 3 clients with over 350 users each that work 24/7 each, there is always calls. If you don't mind, whats everyone else on?

Depends on how much the business you work for is charging the clients. If they're making a killing off your availability then you should be compensated with a "fair figure" - anything else is nothing more than prostitution. It's your time and lifestyle that you are surrendering.

I'd say find out how much they make and then *settle* for 60% of that for the weekly rate. Start higher...

lol forget on call

Sounds like your going to be pretty busy from the looks of things.
How much do you get paid normally for a week?, working 9 hours a day?

If your going to be getting several calls a night or more your going to end up getting bugger all sleep, I would work out how many hours a night you end up taking these calls for and then ask for full pay for all those hours during the week, it's likely to end up a butt load more than $150 after tax.

If they don't like it they can hire someone to do it full time or you can take it in the ass like a chump.

trust me, i would happily not be on call, unfortunately its manditory. Well our hourly rate is about $150 after tax / hour for normal clients, on call we charge (by we i mean them) 1.5 = $225 / hour, i know thats just the hourly rate and not oncall rate to the client, but these are multi-million dollar clients, tier 1 & 2, so they will be charging bit. We dont get access to what we charge, we are just the minions.

good point xy, only problem is it varies greatly from week to week. last week i had 9 calls in just am of saturday = about 4 hours work, next guy on call got 1 call on the sat, wrong number but then got 3 at 1am monday morning. some weeks heaps of calls, others none, hence we want a decent oncall/inconvienience rate for the trouble of always available.... This is just the first step, if the work loads increases substantially again, it can be reviewed in 3 months, but for now we need to get the ball running, its been 12 months since the last review....

Well our oncall rate is $500 a week plus 4% base salary regardless how often we get called. We need to respond to calls iwthin 15 minutes and alsoways be within 15 inutes of in internet connection nad 45 minutes of the office. We are also not expected to be at work on time if we get a call at wee hours i nthe mornnig within reason. Ie our manager trusts our judgement if we get called in over night as to what time we turn up to work.

Ther was actually an interesting thread on the Sage-AU mailing lists about this exact topic only 2 weeks ago with various rates and conditions.

subscribe to Sage www.sage-au.org.au and check the mail archives. Well worth being a member if you do sys admin work.

last edited by CaPt0 at 10:52:14 13/Feb/07

I suppose in the end it comes down to what you feel is a fair compensation for the work you are doing.

If you can find something your happy to take and they are willing to pay then it's win win.

Just try not to bend over to quickly as it takes forever to force another review out of a company :/.

Keep in mind this means cancel your week, no gym, no shops, no movies, no going out, no drinking, no nothing.

Bollocks. If you're on call you should be provided with a mobile phone, and a laptop with wireless internet ( 3g or nextg etc ). You can do pretty much all of those things ( possibly with the exception of drinking ) and still be on call.

If oncall means you can't have a life, then you should be getting paid a lot more than most places are willing to pay for oncall.

You'd be surprised what companies (think large software development house HQ'd in Brisbane recently sold to US investors and may rhyme with Wincom) can pay you for oncall when they also support multi-million dollar clients.

$500 (pre tax) + 4% of your salary for that week in compensation for working 9pm Friday until 7am Monday morning and then 9pm-7am each week night after that. They call it "oncall" but because the pager goes off so often and your mobile phone rings from escalations you end up being awake all of those hours and end up with an 80+hr/wk. It works out that you'd be better spending those extra hours at McDonalds.. glad I don't work there anymore.

I'm with stinky on this one.

I'd be wanting big bucks indeed for having to turn my home into a prison. How many weeks at a time do u have to do this?

Your normal hourly rate is $150 after tax? Is this what u get or is this what your company charges?

my oncall rate would be the worst of the lot id say

i get a flat 500 bux a month (after tax) and a mobile phone and laptop and thats it regardless of how many calls i get

i give appropriate service for my rate of pay

i sure do love the laptop and phone though! (all my calls are free and i use the phone for more personal calls than work calls)


last edited by Spook at 20:10:26 13/Feb/07

i'm on call 24/7 but dont get any extra for it

but if i get called I get paid a callout fee + 1.5 x the amount of time it takes me to fix the problem

I am a contractor and get the following:

1/8th of an hour for evry hour on call
3 hour minimum for callout
phone calls in 15 minute intervals

this works out to an additional 2 hours for weekdays or 3 hours for weekends on top of any call out but with having to be onsite within 60 mins.


this is similar to public servants in my derpartment get which is:
10% an hour for each hour on call
4 hour minimum call out.

i get a flat 500 bux a month (after tax) and a mobile phone and laptop and thats it regardless of how many calls i get

$500 a month?

all i can say is f*** that up the arse side ways. No way in the world would give up my life and freedom to do things for 150 an hour...

^^ good thing no one is asking you. It'd be perfect for someone like me. I never go out coz no one likes me, drinking is for schmucks and I'm usually awake for about 18 hours a day anyway (sleep is for the weak). You'd rake in megabucks.

and spend it on what? u cant go anywhere and spend it, u have no friends to buy stuff for or do things with, no girlfriend... u can have good s*** in your house like tv, computer etc but u give up everything else.

u can be like this guy if u want :)

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1886238291

$500 a month?

free phone, free calls, free laptop

also

i give appropriate service for my rate of pay

and work still thinks im awesome

i get a few calls during the week at 2:35am (we run stuff 24/7)
my usual subconcious response is "ill fix it in the morning"

and i get calls 1 in every 4 weekends, that i go into work for (or try and fix from home, we have to dial into work, no vpn yet, so its still a little ugly)

did i mention the free phone, free calls?
(and the free laptop, which is my media centre for my lcd tele which i paid for with my duty programmer allowance)

also, i did mention that my pay would be the worst

I look at it this way. Just work it all out as though you were 9-5, mon-fri.

If you spend 20hrs working in 'ordinary time', make sure you're making $400 after tax and all work expenses for that.

And say you do 10 hours not in 'ordinary time' (ie after 5pm, before 9am or on weekends), make sure you're making $500 after tax and all work expenses.

Overtime/odd hours on-call is alright, just so long as you're making as s***LOAD.

That's the way I look at it. Mind you, i'm a f/t salary employee with the ability to say yes or no to overtime and oncall.

I will never do oncall again, not in this lifetime.

meh, u must have been doing it wrong

its easy money

Spook has clearly not worked for Wincom.

Only if your i nthe NT team TicMan in which I am not :D

I was and it sure was hell on earth - everything you hear is true Capto :)

What team are you in? We could've sat next to each other!

This is a s*** deal if I've heard one.

Probably with the IT industry is no f***er has a back bone. There are lots of geeks who'll take up a job like this. I once upon a time would have until I learnt the value of a few things in business. Meanwhile labourers are cleaning up!

last edited by Nitro at 21:52:41 15/Feb/07

I'm 'on-call' all the time, but I very rarely get calls (maybe 2-3 each month)...which is a good thing because I don't get paid any extra it's apart of my salary.

I picked a role where I don’t have to do: support, overtime, on call or weekend work. I also picked a career path that gets paid s***-loads.

IT is a horrible industry to work in

Correction: IT CAN be a horrible industry to work in.
Depends on what side of it you work on, and for what company, and what pay/conditions.

I know I have worked at places where I am locked in 9-5:30, paid peanuts, and absolutely slave driven all day. That sucks.

I have also worked variable hours, on call, alright pay. Only issue is too much of my own time is wasted preparing and cleaning up.

The job i have now is great. Good pay, good conditions, if overtime is needed, its paid very well, same with oncall. I have the option to be on overtime/oncall. I can accept or turn it down. I love it. This is how a job is supposed to be.

IT is a horrible industry to work in

i love my job

Anyone else noticed that typo has turned into some sort of quasi-intellectual burtesque wanker on the forums lately?

IT is a horrible industry to work in

Depends on what part of IT you work in.

Anyone else noticed that typo has turned into some sort of quasi-intellectual

Go for the whole hog and say intellectual.

burtesque

Did you mean ‘burlesque’? If so, by what definition? Do you even know what it means?

wanker on the forums lately

Lately? I think you’ll find that I’ve been a wanker on these forums since it was founded. It isn't that surprising that you've only just discovered that fact seeing that you are, in fact, a moron.

No, burtesque. You not knowing what I meant by that sort of backs up my quasi-intellectual comment. Hi-5!

And yes you have always acted like a wanker. Now you are acting more like the specific type of wanker I described.

i dont think it so much of a lately thing either

hes always been a pretty big spanker, at least while ive been around

probably with good reason, i mean he is ever so smart and successful (so he keeps telling us)

haha burtesque

i get a flat 15% of my base salary for being on call.

of course, between me and the users there are two other layers of after hours support (first level after hours, second level escalation, then me) so I get called about 2-3 times a month.

I have a company phone (blackberry), laptop and wireless broadband which travels with me virtually everywhere. I am also pushing for a SSLVPN to remove even that requirement

ps ticman got called so much cos it was just trogs mum calling for phonesex

last edited by Crusher at 18:02:31 16/Feb/07

probably with good reason, i mean he is ever so smart and successful (so he keeps telling us)

I could go on and on about it, but it would only end up making Obes cry.

Dude the only way you could make me cry is if you put that green woolen mumu on again.

haha, mumu

ps ticman got called so much cos it was just trogs mum calling for phonesex

OMG! Don't tell anyone crushles!@%!@

Dude the only way you could make me cry is if you put that green woolen mumu on again.

It wasn't the tunic that made you cry that night ...

Tears are the best lubricant.

damn...! considering you are (probably) qualified you are seriously undercharging.


I am sitting her billing up the last three hours work and it totals over
$400 in labour, and I don't have access to spares at this time of night to get this server back up and running..!


At the end of the day - it's upto you to work out what your employer can afford (quite a great deal by the sounds of things) and how hard it will to be to find someone to replace you given what you know. It's all about supply and demand - basically it comes down to: how much will it take to replace you if your hand in your 2-week notice tomorrow?

The company I work for pays $5000 per annum on top of your base salary for you to be on call on a roster, it works out to be around 1 week out of every 8, so around 6/7 weeks a year depending on holidays etc.

Its a very good deal, considering the average number of calls on call over the entire week is two or three :)

When i was at HP on call we use to get paid a standby rate for the duration. In addition to that we would get paid in 3 hour blocks of time after a call came in starting at timeandahalf and bumping upto doubletime after 3hours.

So, a call came in, we would get paid 3hours of 1.5time, but you are paid for during that 3 hours, so if another call comes in within that 3hours no extra pay.

If after 3hours, another call comes in, we would get another 3hour block, but since we had already clocked up 3 hours of paid time we are now paid 3hours of doubletime.

The rate would only go back to timeandahalf if we get a 10hour break (including not being on standby).

That said, i hated being on standby. It totally screws work/life balance and ruins your sleeping patterns. By the time your sleeping patterns recover it is time to go on standby again.