Generally speaking reserve sucks!
In the best senario the company is growing fast and you won't spend more than 2 or 3 months on reserve (not happening these days). Also, in the best case scenario you and your family live in your domicle and reserves aren't used much. That way you spend time around home with your family doing stuff you like to do, waiting for a call. If you are a half hour from the airport and have a 2 hour call out, then you have an hour and a half to stop what you're doing and get ready for work.
Worst case scenario is being stuck on reserve 2 or 3 years (typical now-a-days) and being assigned to crew domiclies away from your home.
One company I worked for reserves got 10 days off per month and you knew your days off for the month ahead of time. You also knew your reserve time slot for the days you worked a month ahead of time. Generally speaking you had the same time slot for the entire month. Ready reserve (sitting on call at the airport) was very rare, as well. By contract only very few reserves could be made to sit ready reserve at the airport.
At another company I worked for reserves had 11 days off per month, but you didn't know what time you were on call for the next day until 9pm the night before. You had to bid reserve slots every day instead of monthly. It was very typical that I would find out about 9pm that I had to sit ready reserve at the airport at 4am that coming morning. That system really sucked! There was no way to plan anything even for at least part of your days. You could never get on a normal sleep pattern either because the time of days you were on call/called up kept changing. You might be sitting ready reserve from 4am-noon one day, then 6pm-midnight the next, etc., not knowing what time until the night before.
Most new airline pilots, or people who aren't airline pilots, pooh pooh reserve like it doesn't sound that horrible. Ask anyone who has done it for a few months, though, and I've never heard of anyone who enjoys it. You have no control over anything in your life. You are totally at the mercy of crew schedulers. And 99% of the time sitting ready reserve is like watching paint dry.
If the world was fair I think every pilot on the seniority list would pull a couple days of reserve per month to spread things out. If you have been flying your butt off a couple days of sitting reserve might even seem like a nice change of pace anyways.