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Do Long Work Hours Affect Code Quality?
tooTired asks: "At my company the owner is heavily implying that the development staff needs to start working longer hours and weekends to shorten the time-frames on our current projects. The exact quote is 'These 8 hour days have to stop, we need to be working 15 hours a day and weekends, balls to the wall.' We are heavily under-staffed even with my multiple attempts to show the owner that we need more resources. My general feeling is that long hours is generally a symptom of poor project management, and not something to be sought after. I wanted to ask the Slashdot community their opinions on how working long hours during the week and weekends affects the quality of the code they produce, and the overall success of the project." A large reason why many in this industry find themselves working long hours and weekends is that management makes unreasonable expectations and deadlines. Are there ways of communicating to management that long hours to rush a project to completion is not the way to complete a successful project? Update: 08/30 23:11 GMT by C :Grammatical errors in title, corrected. Sorry about that.
Don't burn yourself out for this wanker. 8 hours a day is a totally reasonable limit for a job
Sure, sometimes coders spend a lot more time then that on their job, but that's because they enjoy it, because they want to spend that time working on code for their job.
If your boss is demanding you work 15 hours a day, quit.
Will it affect code quality? I don't really know. In the short term I doubt it, actually. Will it affect your quality of life? Absolutely. Will it affect employee satisfaction? Probably, and down the line that will affect code quality. If you don't like your job, you're code will definitely suck.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Here's a good reference: Forty Hour Week on c2.com, which seems to be the best web authority for Extreme Programming discussions and patterns.
Give it a gander.
fifth sigma, inc.
The best option, if you can afford it, is to quit and get a better job working for sane people. Sometimes, you'll need to put in a 15 hour day. It's unfortunate, but deadlines happen. But to be expected to put in 15 hour days EVERYDAY is absurd and insulting. You have a life outside of work, you need sleep, and you have rights under the law.
Back on topic, working 15 hour days WILL affect your code quality, not to mention your quality of life. Different people have different ways in which they work best, and sometimes a long coding session can work wonderfully, but over the long term it will result in frazzled nerves and bad code.
If he's expecting you to work 15 hour days, you need to let him know you should have twice as many people working 8 hour days instead. If he protests, drop that job like a bad habit. You'll only be hurting your health and sanity if you stay.
I highly recommend that you get a copy of Peopleware. It is a fantastic book overall, but it deals in extent with the death march that is development overtime. I highly recommend you give a copy to your boss as a "Boss' day" present or the like, feigning that you're not quite sure what it's about.
No, eight hours was defined as a work day in the US because of the efforts of the labor movement, beginning the middle of the 19th century and, after a great deal of struggle, culminating in FDR's passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, which was then struck down by the SCOTUS, and then partially replaced by the Wagner Act. The eight-hour work-day came at the expense of workers who were beatened, imprisoned, and killed trying to win it.
Ever heard of an unenforceable contract term?
The EU working time directive trumps the language of the contract. In fact trying to put language in the contract might be used as evidence against the management at a tribunal.
It would be like adding a contract term in the US that said the employee waives rights under the equal opportunity laws.
Labor law is taken very seriously in the EU. Overall the costs of disputes is probably less than in the US however because jury awards in the few types of case allowed in the US tend to be much higher than EU awards.
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Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving 'Mission Impossible' Projects by Ed Yourdon.
Buy, borrow, or spend a few minutes in a bookstore reading the first 2-3 chapters, where Yourdon describes the four different type of death march projects, the prersonalities and politics surrounding them, and what your options are.
What you'll read there will likely be the same sort of advice you're getting here. Yourdon's presentation is a bit clearer, though, and he raises a lot of good points about how to make a decision with regards to whether or not you'll buy into a death march project. The middle section of the book details how to survive on such a project if you do, indeed, decide you're going to take it on.
At the end of the book is "Death March as a Way of Life." The long and the short of it is that these type of projects are increasingly common. If the project fails, then then it's your fault - you didn't work hard enough; the next batch of folks will no doubt be harder workers than you were. If you succeed, and ship on time, you'll just show management that death march projects work. Either way, you'll be in a job where every project requires increasingly superhuman efforts.
Better to decide if you want to deal with that now, instead of trying to do so after a few years of insane workloads have destroyed your marriage, health, and/or mental faculties.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Insightful doesn't even begin to describe your post-- I'm living proof of what happens when management expects more than can be realistically be given. A team of 3 developers were tasked with creating an app in 3 months; complete and ready to roll out (bug checked and the whole works, by the same 3 developers). I told them it wasn't possible and was told it WOULD happen and we'd work extra hours to get it done.
They were so certain of this that I gave up debating the topic, and when month 3 rolled around, lo and behold, NO SHIPPABLE PRODUCT. 2 of the 3 developers were asked to resign with severance pay. I will NEVER accept that kind of shit from management again-- next time it'll be "I work 8 hours a day, and if you don't like it-- too bad!".
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.