The headline is at least somewhat misleading. The plaintiff did not work in software, they seemed to have worked in physical security. It sucks that there was work to be done on a major religious holiday, but it seems reasonable to me that there's an expectation you are 'on-call' outside of normal work hours for a role like that. I'd really like to know what the job expectation was going in.
it seems reasonable to me that there's an expectation you are 'on-call' outside of normal work hours
24/7/365 isn't considered "reasonable" outside of the SV bubble. If you need that kind of coverage, you have two or three people available, sometimes on rotation. Even doctors — people who save lives, not tally reviews — aren't on call 24/7/365.
No company should have a single employee that essential. Will Yelp shut down if he gets hit by a bus?
Are there certain fields where people are implicitly required to be "on call"? As a software dev (in an oncall rotation) even when I'm not on call I still am expected to check in on things and be available during non-business hours.
Same with the IT folk in my company.
However, does the CFO have this same requirement? Couldn't there be some financial-related mishap in the middle of the night? HR? What if an employee, say, assaults some other employee off-site in the middle of the night? Sales guys? ie, one of their customers is irate off-hours. The president?
