Re[2]: On-Call - terms, conidtions and perks!

From: <dgoulet_at_vicr.com>
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 12:24:31 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.002AF8D3.20010208121319@fatcity.com>

Cherie,

We have specific response criteria. From the time of the page your suppose to a)contact the person paging within 15 minutes, b)1 hour till online from home & c)4 hours till in the office (if required).

Normally our HelpDesk acts as the first line of defense from 7am till 11pm. after that the users can call direct to the pager/cellphone. My NT program calls the pager 24x7 no matter what.

Dick Goulet

____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: Cherie_Machler_at_gelco.com
Date:       2/8/2001 7:21 AM

Sean,

This reply sounds different from the others but I thought I would throw it out for comparison.

I am a full-time employee at a smallish
company. When I was hired, part of the
job description was to be on-call. We went over the specifics in some detail before I signed on for the job. There was no
specific monetary compensation for
being on-call but I was offered what I
considered to be a very generous salary
which I accepted with full knowlege of
the on-call requirement.

That said, I was on call 24 hours a day
seven days a week for five months straight except for a 4-day reprieve in October. Once we finally were able to hire a new DBA and bring him up to speed, I've been trading off being on-call with him for the last month.

We take seven-day rotations from Friday
to Friday. No particular compensation per se other than our boss will give us a day off if it's been a particularly bad weekend.

I have a laptop and a beeper to accomplish this.

Our computer center pages us if certain
database jobs fail. Anyone in our company who has access to the pager database
can page us at will. Usually they're not too abusive of the privilege but I try to discourage pages for things that I feel
can wait til the next day (non-Production problems). I get paged an average of once or twice a week. Lately we haven't
been getting many pages at all as
things have settled down somewhat.
Sometimes we get paged a lot more
often.

Once paged we're supposed to reply
promptly (who knows how that is defined). Usually if I don't respond within 15 minutes I get paged again or they call me directly at home. If they can't reach me for some reason after a half hour or an hour,
they will page or call the other DBA(s). We don't currently have a formal
backup DBA arrangement.

Once I talk with whoever paged, I get
the picture of the problem, log in from
home and fix the problem. Then I call
them back or send an email.

At a previous contract position at a
large company, DBAs were on-call
for a week at a time every 8 weeks.
Employees earned an extra day
of vacation for every week of being
on call. Contractors were paid $7
per hour for all 24 hours of being on
call and switched over to billing
full hourly rate once called (1 hour minimum). Most of the DBAs at that company seemed
satisfied with the situation.

Just curious- how many DBAs allow
coworkers to page them at will or
to call them at their home phone number? Is that a fairly common practice?

Thanks,

Cherie Machler
Gelco Information Network

"O'Neill, Sean" <Sean.ONeill_at_organon.ie> on 02/08/2001 04:40:56 AM

Please respond to ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com

To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> cc: (bcc: Cherie Machler/GELCO)

Hi Folks,

Our company has inidicated it's heading for 24 x 7 operation. So informal talks are taking place about the new "challenges" this brings regarding having staff on call to support IT systems. I would very much appreciate your feedback if you are in an on-call environment as to what the terms, conditions, and perks (if any) you get for same.

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