4 hours Ago By Paul Kunert
OnCall...
even when I'm not Do you ever feel like you’re on-call even when you’re technically not on call? Burnout in the IT industry is real, just look at the stats for developers and infosecurity professionals as an example. And sysadmins are no different , walking the tech treadmill during normal working hours isn't enough: Users or bosses feel it is OK to call for support at any time on any day. Administrators may get their day in the sun annually , along with National Lighthouse Day and Middle Child's Day, but they deserve more respect, and this runs to not being disturbed outside of working hours.
Passions were stirred on Reddit this week when an unnamed techie going by the name of Icy_Dream posted a diatribe, rightly complaining about colleagues from departments thinking nothing of contacting the IT team for support whenever they feel like it, including outside of contracted hours. "During orientation we tell the users that there is no on-call rotation for the IT staff. We emphasize this so that they don't think that they can just send us a Teams message or put in a ticket after hours and someone is going to get back with them shortly.
"At least every other weekend there is at least one person directly calling me and messaging me on teams. Last year I had a user call me five times in a row on teams on a Sunday morning. Just now I had a user call me at 7.
30pm on my work phone." This rather suggests "they don’t respect my time," or that techies are idle, always on-call, or don’t care enough to put their lives on hold in the evening or at weekend to help them find an application, plug in a machine or other less serious queries, the comment poster complained. Icy_Dream signed off: "Just because you have nothing better to do than work at 7.
30pm on a Saturday doesn't mean I need to be available to help you. Let me enjoy my Thai food with my family. Fuck off.
" Quite right. One of our sysadmin pals agreed this is a problem. Asked if this was their experience, they responded, “Fuck, all the time.
” In a past life they worked for a small company “so you couldn’t really not answer, you couldn’t really say no and so you just did it as you know you would get shit for it if you didn’t do it.” So what say you, brothers and sisters of tech? Do you tell the bosses to get stuffed? Do you toe the line? And are users getting better or worse? What’s the most pathetic reason you’ve been woken up late or early in the morning to fix a problem that wasn’t a problem? Tell us in the comment section below or write to us here to share your story with The Reg and later with readers in a future Friday On Call column . We keep everything anonymized unless you don't want us to.
® Speaking of weekend outages...
Barclays Bank in the UK just suffered a weekend-long outage, pretty much, leaving people unable to access their money and make payments. The bank acknowledged in a statement at the time there were "ongoing technical issues that are impacting our customers’ accounts." At least one family-of-four, in west London, was reportedly left homeless as the IT breakdown stopped them from completing their new home purchase after selling their previous house.
And another family, in Leicestershire, was similarly affected , with the computer meltdown preventing the buying of a new home. Barclays said the issue should be fixed by now, and apologized..
