[geeks] What do you get paid for wearing a pager?

[Dan Duncan]

On Sun, 24 Sep 2006, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> I have a client that wants to pay me a retainer fee for wearing a pager
> from 7AM to 7PM, Monday thru Friday.

Wearing a pager is a slippery slope.  Trust me.  I've been doing it
for over 10 years.  If you can actually limit it to just that
block of time, you're lucky.  That's close enough to normal business
hours that it wouldn't be too much of a hassle as far as being awake
and such, but what else do you do in that window?  If you do work
for other clients, or you have a normal 9 to 5, what are the implications
of getting a page in that time?  If you only work for this client, make
them aware that if they page you before you have left for work you won't
be showing up at work any time soon because you need to log in NOW and
work on this.  (In my job, a page at 4am means I won't be at my desk
the next morning and this is understood by everyone.  In a previous job,
we got a new manager who expected us at our desks the next morning
regardless of how many hours we had worked an outage during the night.
I got another job.  In retrospect, I probably could have filed some sort
of OSHA complaint since that was an employee position.)

> Then they want to pay an hourly rate for any work I do for them (usual
> sysadmin stuff, plus of course fixing whatever the problem was that
> they actually page me for).

Have a minimum block of time.  If they page you, they pay you for 2
hours even if all you do is say "You need to page the DBA to fix
your Oracle access" or "As root I COULD clean up files to free space
in the application filesystem, but I'm a TERRIBLE guesser and tend to
delete either the oldest or largest files which is probably not
what you want.  Perhaps you should page the application support people"
or "(after you've gone to the trouble to get logged in) The server is
up and running just fine.  If your computer isn't connecting to the
internet, I can't really fix that" or "Yes, /proc is supposed to have
zero space free."   Get the name of the user who paged you and put
it on the bill.  In the long run, this will keep some of the dumber
ones from paging you so often.  (the 2 hours of pay for a few minutes
of ridicule gets old eventually)  Consider limiting the list of who
has your number and who is allowed to page you.  CLEARLY DEFINE
why/who/when can page you.

My pager has settings for a "quiet time" where it automatically
mutes.  I don't use it because I'm on call 24x7 for the week I'm
on call, but consider a pager that allows that, tell them you will
be doing that, and then DO IT.  When they do mess up and page
you, it won't shatter your sleep.

Being on call 24x7 for that week does affect my sleep.  I sleep a
little lighter and thus not as well.

> Kicker:  I need to respond within 15 minutes of a page.

If you really want to dig yourself into that hole, make sure you
have levels of "response."  During that time, 15 minutes may be
reasonable for you to call them back and get a verbal assessment
of the problem and even offer solutions or such.  Actually being
able to log in and do something about it is probably not.  Between
7AM and 7PM, you may drive to and from work once each.  It is quite
possible that you will be more than 15 minutes away from being able to
log in.  When you are on call, what are the implications of going to
the grocery store or out to eat or to the movies?  If you have a rotation,
it's not too bad.  I'm on call 24x7 for one week out of 6 right now.
I don't make (m)any plans for that week and usually do work
around the house.  It's sort of nice because it forces me to have
some free time that week.  I sit home and watch movies and
work around the house and spend time with the family.  "Sorry,
Bob, I can't come to your AA dance recital next week.  I'm on call."

A pager steps ALL OVER your best laid plans.  They need to be
flexible or nonexistent which is easier for shorter periods of time.
A friend of mine does a DAILY oncall rotation.  He is oncall for
1 day every few weeks but it's apparently fairly intense.  I reckon
I could handle almost anything for a day...

What if something else comes up and you need to go to the dentist
or a doctor's appointment?  Can you hand off to someone?  We actually
have a spare pager (it sits in a desk drawer and is powered off) that
is forwarded to the on call person so the
transition is seamless.  If we need to trade with someone for a
few hours, we just forward the pager to that person and they forward
it back.  The person going OFF call is responsible for forwarding
the pager and thus getting rid of it.  This works well because
they are motivated.

What if you can't be reached for some reason?  (the pager or paging service
dies or you can't call back for whatever reason)  Can someone else
pick it up?

> I have done lots of sysadmin work, but really do not quite understand
> how to price the "wear pager and respond in 15 minutes" work.

Also keep in mind that how often the pager is actually used should
be a factor here.  How apt are you to get paged on a given day?  I
go off call tomorrow (We change on Tuesdays.  The aforementioned
previous boss also mandated a change on MONDAYS and since we had
both a primary and secondary oncall person this meant that *4*
people couldn't go out of town on Memorial Day or Labor Day or
MLK weeked instead of the *2* people that would have been
required with a Tuesday changeover) and have only gotten one
page this week outside of business hours.  (midnight on Thursday)
Last time I got a page almost every night inevitably around 3am
and every one of them was a legitimate page.  We have a 24x7
staffed group (3 shifts) doing first level support who also
like to fix problems they're able to handle so I don't typically
get paged unnecessarily.  Users call them, not us, so stuff
is pretty well filtered by the time it gets here.  4 of us support
over a thousand servers in 20 different data centers and we
share pager rotation with 2 other people.  Everything is VERY
tightly controlled and cookie cutter in that type of setup
simply because it HAS to be.  Changes are not made lightly.

-DanD

-- 
#  Dan Duncan (kd4igw)  dand at pcisys.net  http://pcisys.net/~dand
# The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
#        --Humphrey Bogart