On-call fair compensation calculator

On-call comp — what the math actually says

Most engineering orgs compensate on-call as a flat $200/week stipend or — more often — as part of the salary, which means $0 explicit comp. Both are wrong. A fair on-call program prices the actual cost: restricted weekend hours, sleep-disrupted pages, and the cognitive carry of being reachable.

The cost model

weekly comp = (carrier hours × stipend rate) + (page hours × wage × blended multiplier)

Where blended multiplier = after-hours premium × (1 + extra premium for sleep-disrupted pages).

Industry-standard rates

• Carrier stipend: 5-10% of base hourly per restful on-call hour (Google SRE, FAANG bands)
• Page response: 1.5-2x base hourly
• Sleep-disrupted page premium: 2-3x base hourly
• Holiday on-call: 2-3x flat
• Page-density premium: bonus when avg pages per rotation > 5 (system unhealth tax)

Why most orgs underpay

1. Treating carrier time as free — "you're just carrying the pager". The reality is restricted activity (no drinking, no remote vacation, must stay near laptop). Industry-standard 5-10% premium acknowledges this.
2. Ignoring sleep cost — a 2am page costs you 4-6 hours of next-day productivity even if it's only 30 min of active work. The 2x sleep multiplier reflects this.
3. Salary-bundled on-call — claiming "on-call is part of the job" violates wage and hour law in many jurisdictions for non-exempt employees. Even for exempt engineers, it suppresses honest discussion of system health.
4. No page-density tax — when the same engineer pages 10x/week consistently, the cost should rise faster than linear. Instead most orgs treat each page identically.

What good looks like

• Explicit carrier stipend ($25-75/day depending on band)
• Time-and-half or double-time for active page work
• 2x sleep-disrupt premium
• Holiday/major-holiday flat bonus
• Quarterly review: if avg pages per rotation > X, pay or fix the system
• Monthly time-off-in-lieu accumulation cap

Pushback you'll hear

"This is too expensive — engineers will gam the system." The math here uses Google SRE-derived constants. If your on-call is bad enough that paying fairly looks expensive, the right move is to fix the system, not underpay the human absorbing the cost.