[BGM]

Hi,

I am an it consultant and my employer has agreed to offer 'weekend support' over the xmas period to one of our clients...

now, what would an acceptable rate of pay would you think for this service to myself? bear in mind i am a higher rate tax payer and typically work 8.30 'til 6 anyway

Welll... i've been offered £300 for the whole weekend!, am i wrong to expect more? It's only just squeaking above a standard days wages (based on 260 working days a year) after tax.. and it's for two days work!!

Just looking for thoughts really.. extra few hundred quid for 3 or 4 weekends work running up to xmas would be nice, but i am honestly considering saying no on principle.

Would i be rude to come back asking for at *base* a single days wages equivalent per day, and hopefully something bordering on time and a half.. i do appreciate they don't have to pay me anything, but working weekends is not in my contract or taken into consideration in my salary

to clarify this will be me being 'on call' and severely limited to what i can do / where i can go because of it...

Thoughts?

Cheers

[magic77]

My place any weekend work is paid double time so double our daily wage rate.

Use to be time and half until I said hang on get clients to pay double time for fees and then we get paid double. Since clients where happy anyways since out of hours downtime still would cost far less than during office hours it was a win win.

three days work over xmas even just on call at £150 after tax is a bit low IMO.

[sheps]

If it's over Xmas I'd want £500/day.
Anything less wouldn't be worth it, to me.
Sounds mercenary, but if I'm on call over Christmas it needs to be [i]fucking[\i] worth it.

[rsmallwo]

being oncall isnt the same as actually working the whole day at your desk. In essense they are paying you a half days pay to just be 'available' that day. You might not even do any work that day if u get no calls.

If you want abit more and dont know the frequency of calls, ask to be able to claim an hours overtime for every call you receive. Stops the client taking the piss!!!

[sheps]

Originally Posted by rsmallwo

being oncall isnt the same as actually working the whole day at your desk. In essense they are paying you a half days pay to just be 'available' that day. You might not even do any work that day if u get no calls.

If you want abit more and dont know the frequency of calls, ask to be able to claim an hours overtime for every call you receive. Stops the client taking the piss!!!

Can you go out for the day?
Plan anything with your family without fear of it being interrupted or cancelled?
Can you get drunk? Sleep in?

None of the above.
Ergo you're working.
If you have to be available to work, you're working.

Why should you take the risk if there are calls or not?
Assume there are and request to be paid as such.

All IMO of course.

[BGM]

Good, sheps has pretty much got the same view as me, good to see I'm not alone.

I will take this up when I'm next in the office, I thought they were taking the piss too tbh

[rogerxp]

Taking the piss, think I nearly earned that 15 years ago doing overtime at an insurance company over a weekend, and I just shifted paper around!! I'm exaggerating somewhat but seems damn low...

[briers]

Fuck that shit - £300 for a Xmas weekend, one of my favourite times of the year, I don't think they could pay me enough.

If you pay 50% tax surely you think they are taking the piss?

[lolololol]

I think £500 per day is cheap, it depends on your skill set etc what you can demand.

I charge consultants out where i work between £1k - £1.5k per day. Friends of mine are software consultants and wont get out of bed for less than £700-£900 per day and that is just a normal work day - for weekends they would charge 1.5 - 2x normal rates for Xmas weekend 3x minimum.

As an aside I think the term 'consultant' is over used and primarily by Support Engineers.

[briers]

For commercial and investment banks yes maybe those rates - but your balls are gone if you fuck up

When you get paid those rates it's not worth working Xmas unless your life is work and coke and you have no family.

I get paid quite well in a job I could only describe as arbitrage so I just couldn't prise myself to do Xmas support.

I've done it before when I was supporting an I.t system but I would want hourly support so no ties and £50 per hour - depends what the support is. Prompt on my iPhone, ssh preset and service restart commands at the ready, bill for a few quid with some ssh from my iPhone from the pub, job done.

[lolololol]

Funnily enough I look after Financial Services vertical for the software company I represent. However the rates above are flat irrespective of target company or vertical.

A friend of mine is working for Sky on a short term contract helping them upgrade and migrate to the latest version of their service desk solution and he is getting £800 per day, has 2 kids and no coke habit.............(anymore :-)

[willhollin]

I'm in the wrong industry.

[xenon]

Anyone else in IT here got any millenium stories for the bug that never happened? I had to babysit some computers of a high-street building society, even though we knew it would be OK, and managed to negotiate £1,500 for about three hours watching Jonathan Ross on the telly (one could argue it perhaps should have been more). Happy days....

I'm an employee now in charge of the IT department so if something needs doing out-of-hours I just have to grin and bear it but as a contractor I'd want at least £750 a day.

[lolololol]

Originally Posted by xenon

Anyone else in IT here got any millenium stories for the bug that never happened? I had to babysit some computers of a high-street building society, even though we knew it would be OK, and managed to negotiate 1,500 for about three hours watching Jonathan Ross on the telly (one could argue it perhaps should have been more). Happy days....

In the words if Keith Lemon,

Ouuuuuush !!!

[BGM]

tbh, i think we're all singing from the same hymn sheet here..

the bottom line is, clients are being charged double time.. and i am the only remaining employee who developed this system so should

a) also be getting paid double
b) push for more than that due to single point of failure syndrome... i.e. me refusing to be on call.

i'm going to leave b) for now though as a bit of an olive branch.. but next year!

let the negotiations begin

[rich1068]

Originally Posted by willhollin

I'm in the wrong industry.

I was just thinking the same thing. Or I should be employed rather than an employer! I'm on call every weekend, early morning, evening, Bank Holiday, Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Diwali, whatever. If a job's not right or staff don't turn up, who gets the first call? Me!

[xenon]

Originally Posted by BGM

let the negotiations begin

Before you do, spell "remuneration" correctly

[BGM]

Originally Posted by xenon

Before you do, spell "remuneration" correctly

hah! just looked it up..

i honestly thought the word was re-NUM-eration i.e. a number

i'll say 'compensation'

[xenon]

Must be one of the most commonly misspelled words. I've had professional recruitment agencies write to me spelling it incorrectly.

[dar2008]

Originally Posted by BGM

Hi,

I am an it consultant and my employer has agreed to offer 'weekend support' over the xmas period to one of our clients...

now, what would an acceptable rate of pay would you think for this service to myself? bear in mind i am a higher rate tax payer and typically work 8.30 'til 6 anyway

I agree with the others, you should AT LEAST be paid your normal day rate for each day of each weekend you are asked to provide this support. Does your employment contract really not refer to additional hours in any shape or form?

If I were you I'd play hard to get,... you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

[chris_s1]

Just to be on the other side of the fence, I have to pay on-call IT bods to cover 24/7 support of the systems I sell.
IMHO it depends on the likelihood of you being being called. If it is a virtual certainty that you will have to either do something - either working remotely or go to site, then I would expect more, but if its highly unlikely you will be called then probably not.

In my business I have to weigh up the financial penalties for not meeting response times with how much resource costs me. If you tip the balance the other way, you might miss out on easy money!

[gangzoom]

I've worked the last 2 Xmas, and working again this Xmas day....no holiday payments of any kind in the NHS..I do get a free lunch at the canteen though