1. If you are also supposed to be available regular business hours, management treats it as an extra that according to them shouldn't take up a significant amount of time/energy. Therefore, you get compensated for it accordingly: a pat on the head and a fractional amount of comp time that you frequently can't use when needed anyway because you still need to close on your normal tasks.
2. Since it doesn't officially take up any time or energy, there is no problem expecting you at work on the dot when you have been on call putting out fires the night before.
3. Getting paged for nonsense is a real problem. If you were asleep, it can take you 10-15 minutes to figure out it was nonsense and another hour to get back to sleep.
4. Following on the last point, more than two or three pages during sleeping hours means you effectively pulled an all-nighter. Pretty crappy when you aren't 20.
5. When everyone is burnt out from the on-call rotation, it is difficult to close major issues, let alone the small things that generate extra pages.
On-call rotations are the worst.
1. If you are also supposed to be available regular business hours, management treats it as an extra that according to them shouldn't take up a significant amount of time/energy. Therefore, you get compensated for it accordingly: a pat on the head and a fractional amount of comp time that you frequently can't use when needed anyway because you still need to close on your normal tasks.
2. Since it doesn't officially take up any time or energy, there is no problem expecting you at work on the dot when you have been on call putting out fires the night before.
3. Getting paged for nonsense is a real problem. If you were asleep, it can take you 10-15 minutes to figure out it was nonsense and another hour to get back to sleep.
4. Following on the last point, more than two or three pages during sleeping hours means you effectively pulled an all-nighter. Pretty crappy when you aren't 20.
5. When everyone is burnt out from the on-call rotation, it is difficult to close major issues, let alone the small things that generate extra pages.