At my last job I was the only dba for 1.5 years, no compensation for on
call. When the second dba was hired we rotated a month at a time beginning
on the 15th of the month. We supported an accounting department (among
others) and quite often the developers had golives on the last business day
of the month. Rotating in the middle of the month let one dba be part of
the golives/monthend as well as part of any problems that cropped up due to
the golive/monthend. They then started paying $25 a day for on call,
regardless of whether or not we were called. Technically the person not on
call was second on call and should have gotten $10 a day (but I never argued
about that, I was just soooo glad not to always be 'it'!).
RE coworkers calling. We set up an email alias for the dbas. We both
carried cell phones with alphanumeric paging. The developers were supposed
to send an email to the alias, which would then be passed on to both of us.
The person on call would look at it, the other would ignore it. If a page
was sent out again because the first hadn't been answered, the person
technically not on call would respond. Then that person got to make a
decision, fix the problem or try to get ahold of the other dba. Lots of
pages meant the on call dba probably needed help. Coworkers calling
directly on a cell phone or to a home phone was strongly discouraged. End
users were *never* to call as all problems were to route through the
developers. This made switching on call very easy, we could swap a day or
even a few hours without having to let anyone know. Once we trained the
developers it worked pretty well! We managed to get the calls down to once
or twice a month so the pay was sweet!
Now I'm back to being the only dba, no extra compensation for 24x7 on-call.
I do strongly encourage the developers to call me, on my cell, whenever they
run into problems. This group tends to spin their wheels for too long
without calling. (Ever heard of developers who will wait *2* hours before
calling when the database is down?!!!) I still got a raise, even after
including the 6 months of $25 days of on call. It's a wash. At least until
international operations kick in......
Linda
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 8:22 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
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" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 02/08/2001 04:40:56 AM
Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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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