The difference with dev oncall vs doctor on call is that it is self inflicted.
Why are you getting paged? Because you built the system.
Either your system isn't resilient enough, or you have noisy alerts. Both are problems you should be motivated to fix.
I have been on call 24/7/52 in SRE roles most of my career. It has either sucked hard, or not at all. And the time it sucked the most was because every single practice was bad. And now, I build better things because of if. Paying me more for on call wouldn't have changed how much it sucked. It wouldn't have made any material impact on my actual quality of life. But it would have done two things:
1) made me feel like I can't complain
2) give me less motivation to fix it
Paying for on call doesn't seem like a win. I want happy employees, not disgruntled but silent ones.
I have been on call 24/7/52 in SRE roles most of my career. It has either sucked hard, or not at all. And the time it sucked the most was because every single practice was bad. And now, I build better things because of if. Paying me more for on call wouldn't have changed how much it sucked. It wouldn't have made any material impact on my actual quality of life. But it would have done two things: 1) made me feel like I can't complain 2) give me less motivation to fix it
Paying for on call doesn't seem like a win. I want happy employees, not disgruntled but silent ones.