Ask Slashdot: Best Tools To Aid When "On Call"?

An anonymous reader writes "Since most readers of slashdot are IT'ers, I assume this is a familiar story: when working in IT, it often happens you need to be standby or 'on call' during a certain period. That may mean you can receive phone calls or text messages from a monitoring system in the middle of the night. I've been looking for a way to have those alerts wake me in the middle of the night but not my partner, who is sleeping right next to me. Are there hardware aids out there that can alert a person without troubling their close environment? I'm thinking armwrists, vibrating head pillows, ..."

Comments

Re:Hmm..

[grantek]

Give her some nyquil?

Honestly, after a few weeks you won't even need that. I can be called with a loud ringtone, have a discussion with the helpdesk about the problem, stumble out of the room to go work on it, stumble back into bed a few hours later, and my partner doesn't even realise I was called the next day. Now that she's on call as well the same thing happens to me - if you wake up and you're tired, and your subconscious knows you don't have to get up and work, you can fall back to sleep as soon as your head relaxes back into the pillow.

I remember watching a recent Bond movie (I think it was Quantum of Solace) where Bond calls M in the middle of the night and she logs onto a workstation built into the bedside, if you look you can notice she has a partner in bed that doesn't budge an inch :)

Resume

[Aladrin]

The best tool for on-call duty is a resume. And a list of jobs to apply for.

Even if you don't normally get called while on-call, it likely prevents you from going about your life. You can't go to a movie, go out of town, etc etc. They should be paying your for those services. If you aren't getting paid well for it, don't accept a job with on-call duties.

And besides all that, a job with on-call duties is a job that has need of them. That means they either have an unstable system or they aren't staffed properly. It's a huge sign that things are not right, and that company is best avoided.

I didn't realize all that until I got a job that didn't involve it. I kept making excuses for the company, and for myself. I'm so glad I'm not there any more.

Re:sleep?

[swordgeek]

You're missing a major point here: Rotating on-call.

I'm on call right now, 24/7. I'm required to be available and functional (i.e. in town, sober), and must answer the pager within ten minutes.

For one week out of six.

That means that for about nine weeks a year, I'm a slave to the company. That also means that in a telecom company with >>2million customers, I can completely shut off my mind to work at 17:00 for the rest of the year.

And yes, I get paid well during those nine weeks.