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Do Long Work Hours Affect Code Quality?

Posted by Cliff on from the unreasonable-management-expectations dept.

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.

3 of 822 comments (clear)

  1. Just quit. by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  2. Good Resource by philovivero · · Score: 5, Informative
    Most of the arguments you'll see in this discussion have their start in Extreme Programming.

    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.
  3. Re:Yup by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 5, Informative
    8 hours was defined as a work day for a reason- it's the point of diminishing returns.

    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.