Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoodoof | Hacker News Reader

The way to handle it is to offer it but don't require that they take it.

"OK we have three options regarding tech support. First is best effort response time which costs you nothing, next option is 3 day response time which costs $X, final option is 365 X 5 days 9-5 on call tech support which costs $300/week plus $100/hour per call out." Which would you like?

View on HN

$300 per day and $250 per call-in hour.

An obligation to answer all phone calls immediately affects other obligations. A one person shop has no slack staff.

quite 15! years ago at BT the call out rates where $750 per month for 30 min response for 1 in 4 (plus toil at OT rates)

Can you explain what "30 min response for 1 in 4" means? Does that mean 25% of calls will be answered within 30 mins?

1 in 4 likely means you are on call 24 hours a day for 1 week out of each 4 weeks. The support is then shared between 4 people. That's a fairly typical arrangement in largish companies.

You had to make contact within 30 mins when paged/called and be working on the problem within 2 hours.

1 in 4 is being on call 1 week in 4 though some DBA's where on 4 in 4 and got called about twice a year very lucrative.

Thanks, that makes sense. Where does the 2 hours come from? I don't see that included in the original thing, or is it implied/standard?

Part of deal you had to make contact within the first time 20 or 30 min and be logged in and working within the 2h.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com