There are a lot of jobs that require out of hours support, specifically those that aren’t tied to business hours. In tech at least, many of the sites and services you use are built off the backs of software engineers that are paged at 5am because latency is a little higher than normal.
I don’t raise this to say that this rule is bullshit, but to say that there are a lot of arguments that will be used to push people to work longer than their allotted hours. IMO this is absolutely required, but I would go further and say that any contact outside of working hours implies a working contract, and guarantees that the employee is paid for the disruption caused. That includes on-call too, which is often unpaid.
Labor laws in the US are, frankly, hilariously bad. You deserve unlimited sick pay, at least 25 days holiday (separate from sick leave), and the removal of at-will employment. What is described here is the bare minimum of what you should have.
Those of us who admin critical systems know when we’re responsible and know which folks call us regarding those systems. I’m not answering a call from a random manager but If the engineering chain calls, they don’t abuse the privilege.
There are a lot of jobs that require out of hours support, specifically those that aren’t tied to business hours. In tech at least, many of the sites and services you use are built off the backs of software engineers that are paged at 5am because latency is a little higher than normal.
I don’t raise this to say that this rule is bullshit, but to say that there are a lot of arguments that will be used to push people to work longer than their allotted hours. IMO this is absolutely required, but I would go further and say that any contact outside of working hours implies a working contract, and guarantees that the employee is paid for the disruption caused. That includes on-call too, which is often unpaid.
Labor laws in the US are, frankly, hilariously bad. You deserve unlimited sick pay, at least 25 days holiday (separate from sick leave), and the removal of at-will employment. What is described here is the bare minimum of what you should have.
Those of us who admin critical systems know when we’re responsible and know which folks call us regarding those systems. I’m not answering a call from a random manager but If the engineering chain calls, they don’t abuse the privilege.