Google pays people, both in cash, and/or in compensatory time off. This is specifically called out in the SRE book [0].
They've noted that it's important to pay compensation, both to be fair to the employees, and as a closed-loop feedback mechanism to ensure the business prioritizes fixing pages. This concept of business feedback is also discussed in a chapter of the terrific Seeking SRE book, chapter "Against On-Call: A Polemic" [1].
> Compensation
Adequate compensation needs to be considered for out-of-hours support. Different organizations handle on-call compensation in different ways;
> Google offers time-off-in-lieu or straight cash compensation, capped at some proportion of overall salary.
> The compensation cap represents, in practice, a limit on the amount of on-call work that will be taken on by any individual.
> This compensation structure ensures incentivization to be involved in on-call duties as required by the team, but also promotes a balanced on-call work distribution and limits potential drawbacks of excessive on-call work, such as burnout or inadequate time for project work.
They've noted that it's important to pay compensation, both to be fair to the employees, and as a closed-loop feedback mechanism to ensure the business prioritizes fixing pages. This concept of business feedback is also discussed in a chapter of the terrific Seeking SRE book, chapter "Against On-Call: A Polemic" [1].
> Compensation Adequate compensation needs to be considered for out-of-hours support. Different organizations handle on-call compensation in different ways;
> Google offers time-off-in-lieu or straight cash compensation, capped at some proportion of overall salary.
> The compensation cap represents, in practice, a limit on the amount of on-call work that will be taken on by any individual.
> This compensation structure ensures incentivization to be involved in on-call duties as required by the team, but also promotes a balanced on-call work distribution and limits potential drawbacks of excessive on-call work, such as burnout or inadequate time for project work.
[0] https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/being-on-ca... (search Compensation) [1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920063964.do