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Ask HN: Refusing 24x7, What's Your Experience?

5 points by dm03514 ↗ HN
Anyone out there refuse to go on 24x7? How'd you do it? What was your experience?

US here. They flipped 24x7 on 3 of us on our team, no warning, 3PM Friday, before week long holiday. I'm furious and I'm trying to figure out best way to proceed.

I didn't say "no" on Friday, even though I'm perfectly comfortable saying it, because it would have screwed my 2 coworkers over (who were equally undeserving of the decision), so trying to figure out strategy for when we get back. Would love to hear about your experiences.

Thank you

7 comments

[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] thread
NickRandom
I'm confused - Do you mean you were asked to work/be on-call 24 hours per day, seven days per week? If so - hell no. Hopefully I misunderstood what you meant by 24x7! [Edit to update] If that is in fact the case, I would suggest you ask for all of the Directors' cell-phone numbers and call them at 2am or 4am etc and if they don't answer then ask them why they expect you to do something they don't do themselves but I honestly think I must be misunderstanding the 24x7 bit
dm03514
Yes, there was misalignment on service ownership and management decided on Friday that our team would cover 24x7 on call for 10 days of holiday (we have a company holiday the week of us thanksgiving).

The 10 days were split between 3 team members (myself and 2 others).

The situation is a failure, feels arbitrary and makes me livid.

——-

Would love to do that :p get their numbers tell them to make sure they have internet at all times and be within 5 minutes of their laptop at all times.

lostdog
Sounds like this service can be without support for a while. After all, it wasn't important enough for someone to figure this out in advance. I'm sure if it goes down overnight the business will be fine.
yuppie_scum
Quit.

The job market is in the job seeker’s favor. You can can certainly find a job with better understanding of work life balance.

thedevindevops
That isn't in my contract but if you want to talk about contract re-negotiation, I'm up for talking about all those inflation-busting raises I've missed over the years...
iceburgcrm
Say no it is not in your contract.

Or ignore the page/call and tell them you are too sound of a sleeper.

Don't let your co-workers decisions change your own because they may be looking for leadership from you.

solardev
If they're paying you time and a half for every minute you're on call just waiting around that week, I'd consider it. Otherwise I'd refuse that if I were you. No job is worth your sanity like that. Leave if you must and find someone who respects you more.