I was looking at a potential new job until it occurred to me to ask about dealing with “on-call” support.
As I work in tech, there is usually an expectation that some level of support is handled off hours in case systems go down. However this position didn’t have any compensation for making yourself available and generally only 15 mins from a phone or computer to support the systems. The best they could offer was “time in-lieu” if you get called, which is basically saying they’ll let you work your contracted maximum hours despite it being unsociable hours.
Fuck that.
After seeing elsewhere someone commenting that they would refuse to on-call if there was also a “return to office”, because if they had to go to the office to work, then how could they possibly support it from home, it made me wonder what other things should I remember to enquire about when interviewing and asking the hiring company?
That sounds more like HR propaganda to me. Interviews aren’t free, but they are cheap. Paying someone what they are worth, vs. low-balling someone desperate, is fiscally practical.
I’ve gotten to the point where I ask recruiters that hit me up on LinkedIn if the position has a listed salary range. If not, I usually bail right then, unless the job or company is interesting enough to have a conversation. But if they are cagey about salary or benefits, I bail. They are the only reason I’m there, so being cagey about them is a red flag.
This. Any position without a salary band, and a realistically narrow one, isn’t a real position.