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Can People Really Program 80+ Hours a Week?
ibn_khaldun asks: "A question in light of the EA controversy. I'm an academic researcher who does his own programming -- I have to eat what I kill. In my 35 years of coding experience, any time I try to work on a complex program for more than, say, 60 hours a week (coding, not just showing up) for a couple weeks at a time, I'm just asking for trouble: I generate buggy code and debugging it only makes it buggier. Numerous studies in other fields (law firms, hospitals) have shown that mistakes rise exponentially after anyone works about 50 hours per week (don't think about this if you go to the emergency room at 3 a.m.)." Are these rational working conditions? (More below.)
"Does EA sprinkle magic pixie dust on their serfs to get around this problem, or is the work so trivial that it can be done while pathologically sleep deprived, or are the PHB's so technically challenged they don't realize what is going on? This whole 'death march' mentality seems absolutely crazy to me as a programmer, but appears to be common. Honestly, can someone enlighten me as to how these 80+ hour weeks ever accomplish anything?"
I suspect most of the programmers working 80+ hours a week spend at least half of it not actively writing a line of code, be it meetings, waiting for some script to finish or reading slashdot.
Personally every person has a capacity and coding 80+ hours without any problems personally to health or even to the code's health is out of the question. I totally agree that it is going to generate very buggy code and may result in more hours trying to debug it. Instead the entire process should be well organised and time alloted to have the best result.
80h hard work for serveral weeks is suicide...mental at least
I think its important to note that not everyone pulling 80 hour work weeks at EA is a programmer. There are a ton of 3d artists there too. And honestly, as a 3d artist myself I can say: plenty does get done in those extra hours. Its not all neccesarily good. But since "ok looking" art is a bit more subjective than a hard and fast bug, its easy to say the 80+ hour work week is more productive than the 50 hour when it comes to the artists I would immagine. For managers at least...
Isn't it possible that the quality of work after some point is so bad that it actually takes as much or more time to fix it as it did to do it in the first place? If that's the case, it's not just diminishing returns - it's negative returns.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The Pointy Haired Bosses want to be seen to be doing everything in their power to get the job done, on time and on budget. They see that things are falling behind schedule. What's the instinctive reaction when you're falling behind? Jack up the pace. That means making people work longer and longer hours to try to catch up.
They don't know, or don't care because the Powers That Be don't know, that this is counter productive. They don't know, or don't care, that they're more likely to fall even further behind schedule this way than if the people on the job just do regular hours.
By pushing their people beyond reasonable limits, their bosses can pat them on the back and say, "Well, you did your best, but it wasn't good enough. Obviously we need to check our scheduling better next time." There are no control groups to demonstrate that it was the overscheduling that caused the rampant deadline misses, the excessive bugs, etc.
Some crunch time is fine -- if you're close to being finished, and you have a hard deadline, crunching can get the job done when nothing else can. It's overdoing it that kills you. If I were a manager, I'd be erring on the side of too little crunch time -- not too much. And I'd probably be sacked because the perception would be that I hadn't done everything I could to finish the project on time.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The only solution is education, and that ain't gonna happen if those that need educating don't know that they need educating.
"Even if you were to assume that my productivity were to go down 10% for every hour over 50 I worked, I'd still be *somewhat* productive at hour 80. Of course it's not linear like that, but if something's *got* to get done, then it's got to get done, whether I'm tired or not."
You're making the faulty assumption that negative work never occurs. However, it is not at all rare that a mistake made in one minute can later require ten minutes of time to correct.
At a certain point, the productivity of an individual reaches the point where the mistakes they make during an hour will take more than an hour to correct. Since errors in coding aren't fatal, the problem probably won't arise after fifty hours a week, but it seems possible and even likely that it will arise after sixty hours a week.
Although this may not apply as much to EA, it applies a lot in most the rest of computing. EA makes games, and games are mostly just a get-it-out-the-door type of product. You test for errors, make sure it's clean, then sell it. However, anything that will need to be upgraded to a newer version at some point will need to have clean, maintainable code. For that sort of material, I think you will, overall, start getting negative returns after about sixty hours a week. As far as games go, though, you really might not hit the point until after seventy or eighty hours.
Yes i think so. I find that overworking mainly reduces my capacity to see the big picture. To understand the implications of each change I make.
If the code is well architected, then my return past 40 hours does not diminish so quickly. But chances are if they are asking you to work past 48 hours, your management lacks management abilities, and are askin you to make up for their shortcomings.
$17/hr. That's what they expect to pay for artwork done in 80-110 hour weeks. On the plus side- that many hours means you're pulling down $100,000 a year....
I say that's not much left after you're done paying for your divorce lawyer and your triple heart bypass when you reach forty...
I did the death marches, the crazy overtime, and the stress before, and you know what? I'd rather be paid half as much but stay 10 times more healthy and happy in my family. And yes, it does pay the bills and the mortgage, as long as you plan your spendings reasonably and you don't live on credit like most Americans do.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
70 or 80 hours a week may be possible for a young programmer but it would kill me. Literally. If I didn't die from a heart attack I would fall asleep on the way home and possibly kill someone else as well as myself.
Why do that to your body? Trust me, your health is worth more than the overtime.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I think this issue depends on one's emotion state as much as the "work" load. I've been extremely productive on some fun, challenging assignments that made me want to spend every waking moment thinking about the problem. But if the problem (or associated people) are unpleasant/unworthy, then productivity goes to crap in no time. I think some of this is related to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow" (an introduction to the idea) in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In my case I have pulled 35hr all-nighters which when added to the regular time in the week is a little over 80hrs over 7 days.
However, in those cases, the all-nighter is fueled by intense adrenalin trying to meet a deadline, and I have found that my code doesn't appear to suffer. My trick is to drink lots of water during (YMMV).
As long as the 80hr week is a rarity, then I can deal with it. But making a habit of doing more than a typical week's work (about 60hr) would surely kill me.
This matches my experience. I (and the teams I've worked on) can work long overtime (60 to 80 hours) for a few weeks... maybe even a month or two rarely.
But continually? Or to even attempt to pull one of these months every quarter? I can't do it. The people I know who think they can do it can't do it either.
We always ended up making bad mistakes that took a lot of time to clean up. We missed obvious architectural improvements that could have saved us days of work. We overwrote code and trashed data! :)
The point is that someone who is very tired will make a lot of basic mistakes that waste a lot of time. Someone who is well-rested and thinking clearly will be much more efficient. Work can progress smoothly and somehow you will be able to work calmly, not dealing with crisis after crisis, like the 80 hour teams do.
Agile Artisans
If I am working on a proof of a new result and I have no interruptions (e.g. teaching, family), I can work for a very long time but at some point I have to stop or my calculations, insights, etc. will be wrong. My normal workday is 7AM - 10PM but I can take a break (or a quick nap in my office) whenever I need; I do not think the ordinary cubical worker has this option. I have found programming when tired to be easier than writing proofs - until I look at the program output and realize that it is garbage. :-) (Those little details do matter.)
HTH, HAND.
when a company starts measuring work performance in terms of hours on the job, just walk away. It is a dead end. Unless you are talking about menial production tasks.
WTF difference does it make how many hours you spent on something? It is of course the results that matter.
When someone start talking about how many hours they spent doing X, they obviously suck at it/hate it.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
The first group of posts indicate that we mostly agree that programming (or working in general) for more then 80 hours is not productive and harms your lifestyle. Hardly a groundbreaking conclusion, though there are enough people out there that might have felt that they should work this much because everyone else seems to.
So what are you going to do with this knowledge? Are you going to have a talk with your peers? How about your manager? Or bring it up at the next all-hands, right after the available high-ups tell you how fine your company is doing? How should we bring this up without fear for our jobs?
Here are some things to think about (feel free to add):
- Post anonymously. If you are truly affraid of consequences, try to do something like what the EA employee spouse did. Post an anonymous letter with your complaints. Keep the letter constructive.
- Talk to the right person. Before you pour your heart out, make sure you are talking to the right person.
- If your boss doesn't listend to you, consider talking to his/her boss instead. If this is too much of a step, consider talking to HR first.
- Talk to coleagues to measure how they are feeling. It could be usefull to break this feeling to your bosses as a group.
- Be carefull not to whine. You want a discussion, this includes listening to the others sides argumentation of why you have to work this way.
- No statistic should tell you how you should feel.
Lets get of our whining asses and start the discussion with the people that will allow you to get your life back on track. This here slashdot forum, though a decent source of news, is not the place where this particular issue will be solved. If you feel strongly about this topic then please do make a start at really solving it...it is your life you know.
I dare say that when you have a severe case of the stupids is the best time to test.
You are much more likely to do the same stupid shit your users will do.
Make notes. Make automated tests. Fix it when you are fresh.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
It's common hospital practice in the medical industry to work interns and residents upwards of 12 hours a day. The practice has been defended in the past as nessecary to educate our soon-to-be doctors on the diseases a hospital may see. In fact, I believe more than a few people have said that "the tradgedy of 12 hour intern workdays is that they're not in the hospital for the other 12." There's also been a backlash at the lack of people opting for specialties that demand this insane behavior. Mostly illwill directed at radiologists and other "doctors of convinence."
But I've never seen a scientific study show that interns and other medical professionals are as effective on hour 12 as hour 3. Its been a while since I've studied this at all; its possible that today the AMA and acadamia has condemned the practice, but I wouldn't count on it.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
People like you deserve a swift kick to the head. This "if you don't like it, quit" bullshit is something only a person who does the hours voluntarily could possibly say.
Tell you what: why don't you spend ten years or so building up knowledge and ability in your favorite field, only to see it turn to shit as monolithic corporations come onto the scene, buy up all the small developers, milk their creativity for a few extra dollars. Get thrown onto an uninspired dev team working for years on a soulless movie-license title or a sports franchise, then be told that if you don't work every weekend and 14 hours a day you'll be shitcanned, with no retirement funds and no investments because - guess what! - working 14 hour days and weekends leaves you little time, money, or inclination to plan for the future.
Nevermind the numerous studies which have proven that this work practice is actually harmful. Nevermind the tremendous insult to one's own professionalism and intelligence that one's work is rarely looked at with the same level of appreciation as one's hours. All's fair in war and business, right?
I'm sure that's what we all have in mind when we form a mental picture of the words "free market". Slave labor is slave labor, and the fact that many places allow any person who types on a computer to be called an IT worker and exploited is just further proof of how the world is taking a step backwards.
A few years ago, I worked as a contractor for a certain large company. This company is notorious for driving people too hard, so I had reservations about working there.
... - life's just too short for this sort of rubbish, and IMHO anyone who thinks it's appropriate really needs to adjust their thinking.
When my contract was handed to me for signing, the default "max 8 hrs x 5 days per week" clause had been removed. I asked about that, as that clause generally serves as protection for both my customer (they don't get slugged for huge dollars and can plan their cash flow accordingly) and me (I get to see my family). The company replied that it was normal practice for them to remove any such clauses.
A few weeks in, and most of the people around me were working 18 hour days regularly (I started right around crunch time). I made a policy decision as follows:
- I'd work up to 14 hours a day
- once I'd worked 60 hours a week, I'd go home
Remember I was a contractor; I didn't feel any personal or professional commitment towards a management group that had put into place these sorts of work practices, and it was quite obvious to anyone working there that the long hours being worked were leading to mistakes that led to additional hours being worked to fix them.
Anyway, as expected, I got confronted pretty quickly about my perceived slacking off. My response was that I hadn't signed up for a lifestyle change; I was after income, pure and simple. Being close to Xmas, I was quite happy to work a few extra hours, pocket some extra cash and thus fund a nicer holiday, but that was the extent of the sacrifice I was prepared to make for the cause.
I pretty much had them over a barrel at that point; there was no time to train someone to replace me, and I'd made it abundantly clear what my motivations were and that they were essentially non-negotiable.
My personal lack of commitment was discussed in front of the rest of my workmates, by my boss, at the next team meeting. I took it on myself to respond, outlining my reasons for working as I did and that I didn't regard limiting myself to 60 hour weeks as being a lack of commitment - I said I thought it showed a lack of planning, and left it at that. When I finished, you could have heard a pin drop...
A few days prior to Xmas, my boss didn't turn up. This was strange, given that he worked huge hours himself, but not unexpected since pretty much everyone was quite ill at that point due to tiredness and shared (airborne) diseases. When he didn't turn up the next few days either, someone called his house and there was no answer. Eventually a relative of his went to his house and found he'd hung himself in the bedroom.
I've got no doubt at all that his death was 90%+ due to overwork, possibly exacerbated by my taking a somewhat defiant stance in public several days earlier. He'd lived alone and worked huge hours for the past several years, so there was no real possibility for other issues to have caused his suicide.
After a few months' thought, and subsequent discussions with my fellow workmates at that place, I decided that what had happened had been pretty grim but ultimately good things had come out of it. Work practices in that particular group had changed quite dramatically in the following few months; the new boss had put caps on the number of hours worked each day and each week, and re-introduced paid overtime for full time employees. Although several people had left (the turnover in that group ran close to 80% per year), those that were still there were now working in a way they felt was personally and professionally sustainable.
Having several of them call me up to thank me for taking a stance in a very awkward environment certainly helped me personally, although my "stance" was totally selfish.
Since then, I simply refuse to work in "death march" situations. I find the whole idea totally absurd; the end result is that a crappier product is shipped slightly sooner, but people's lives are affected too much for the trade-off to be worthwhile. I've seen two deaths (one described above), several bitter divorces, people leaving the industry, middle-of-the-office screaming matches,
I think that sometimes people can put in 80 hours per week, but that just leaves time for sleep. I also believe that leads to crappy code (in the long-run), a shorter lifespan, and an overall poor quality of life.
More often than not, I think that this 80 hours per week is a "brag badge" for those developers who do it occasionally and want to announce to the world how "cool" they are.
This is not the correct comparison to make. If you work 80 hours in a week, and two others each work 40 hours in the same week, that puts you 20 hours behind those other two. If the 80-hour work weeks are the norm rather than the exception, they should hire more employees to work regular hours at regular productivity levels.
I'd have to agree with the other person who said to resign -- if the management can't figure it out, is it really the sort of management that you'd want to be working for any signficant time?
It's probably time to start looking for another job where you're not working for and with incompetant people.
Baring that, you have to wait for the person to go on vacation, and show that you'r not falling behind or having any sort of trouble keeping up without them there.
Of course, pointing out the problem does you next to no good -- because the management will have next to no ability to create a good resolution -- the lead programmer will have been set in his ways if he's been working for any significant time, and as he wasn't corrected early, will most likely slip back to those habits.
Your better bet is to find him a life. If he's single, try fixing him up with someone, or find some sort of social group to hang out with. If he's not, he's trying to find excuses to avoid his family, so it'd be better to find something that's work related, that his spouse might accept, so look for any groups like PerlMongers, SAG, or whatever else might be appropriate based on his discipline.
If he's an introvert, you're just screwed. The real question is -- is he one of those people who is so incompetant that they create more work than they resolve? If he's not, you might be able to just avoid it, and take some time in finding a new job. If he's one of those negatively effective workers, I'd look to get out as quickly as possible.
Yeah, I briefly worked at a place where overwork by a few key people was the norm. They never had any time to sit back and think about the big picture because they we always reacting to some emergency and always in panic-mode.
They also didn't have time to even think about delegating their tasks to others (who were underworked) and ramping up new people. Of course, the impression management got was that these people were hard workers and absolutely critical to the company (they were), but really, they were dragging it down by continuously missing targets, messing up mission critical systems, etc.
In the end, the place was just too dysfunctional for me.
I don't think anyone can work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. You need some time to refresh,recycle,renew. What's a reasonable amount of time to recuperate?
Ask an Amish. Your bosses grew up in a post-industrial society that still has a lot of funky industrial/pre-industrial ideas. Historically, sharecroppers and subsitence famers worked from Sun up to Sun down - usually 12 - 16 hours for 6 days a week during the Spring, Summer and Fall in temperate climates. The only motivation they had was starvation (if they were smart) or cultural obligations to 'look busy.' However, most of the work on a farm is menial and not intelectual. Before the rise of computer-assisted industry, a borderline functional intellect in our post-industrial world could find ready work doing slow, repetative tasks that at one time required only a strong back and good arms/legs. Today, work such as programming requires mental, verses phsycial, prowess. While anyone will eventually hit the 'Wall' physically, you can also hit one mentally. (Often long before your body wears out.) Your employers need to learn the Death-March lesson in a bad way.
I knew guys who would feel guilty about going home to see their kids when crunch was on.
It's good to love your work. But, normally you trade your time and effort to someone so they can (hopefully adequately) pay you. You're trading part of your life so you can live the other part better. It's not you or your cow-orkers responsibility to make up for management or reality, and such attitudes (while vainfully heroic) are the reason projects fail. If it can't be done on time, either cancel it or move the dealine. Don't kill yourself for a 'consensual hallucination.'
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
Interesting list, but I don't think it equates with productivity. Besides pure labor, you can build wealth with equity. If I had a million dollars in the bank, I could easily make $20k/year just sitting on my butt - just about what an average New Zealander produces in a year. But, by most people standards, the Kiwi is going to be considered more productive than me with my bedsores.
You could argue that the money in the bank is a function of productivity, but if I spend that all and keep up my same level of loafing, my income will drop to zero -- but I would be hard to argue it was possible to become any less productive than I was already.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
So if what he does Mon-Thu is adequate, and what he does on Friday wastes next Monday, he's effectively productive for 60% of the time. 60% of his 60h week is 36 hours, so maybe he's not doing any worse than you.
Just a thought,
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
But what if management always see's this guy there at his desk and yourself as the one leaving early and coming in later?
All of the sudden it does affect you because the PHB's look at yourself as the slacker.
That is the problem.
Image is everything in corporate America and politics comes in and the guys who appear to work harder are the ones always heard.
http://saveie6.com/
A guy I workd for took pride in "working 18 hours a day". That included hours he sat zoned out staring at the screen, with his head on the table nodding off, and even sleeping under his desk. But he kept beating everyone else over the head about what slackers we were for not putting in the hours he did. And as for the quality of the work (he was management); terrible decisions that cost the company (and me eventually) a fortune.
Studies show conclusively that lack of sleep is detrimental to problem solving. Even more important, sleep HELPS problem solving. You brain will actually work out issue in your sleep. Which is why "sleeping" on the problem is actually a legitimate problem solving skill.
Absolutely
Intelligent healthy young people can spend most of their waking hours doing simple tasks which do not require exceptional creativity. The deffinition of work which can be accomplished in a sixty hour working week is therefore non creative and repetitive.
If you are working sixty hours plus a week, then you are not doing work which taxes your mind and you are wasting your talents. Of course its on offer and does pay the bills and therefore is not neccessarily a bad thing from a financial point of view. However it is bad for your physical, mental, spititual and social health.
Variety is the spice of life, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy, addicts do not make good friends - I can think of no aphorisms which praise spending excessive time doing the same thing. Why do you think Archimedies is reputed to have discovered the law of displacement of water being equal to the weight of a floating body in the bath - most insights are generated when you walk away from the task and see the whole picture whilst your mind idles. Maybe your job is so simple that your not even thinking about it half of the time and you can solve the interesting problems whilst "working" - in which case a machine should be doing that "work". Thats how the industrial revolution changed the world of "work" and its comming to the world of software real soon now.
If sucess is just a question of working more hours then beware, because half the world is underemployed and they are a lot cheaper than you.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I try to find something necessary-but-dull to do whilst mulling - timesheets, replying to idiotic emails, whatever, though - kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and you also "look productive"
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
I think this industry has fallen into a sad state when coders are actually taking uppers to get themselves "up" enough to finish the workload that is being expected of them. The day I consider pumping that kind of garbage into my system to meet a deadline is the day I walk out the door and look for another job, or possibly another career.
I think it is a matter of how those 80 hours are being burned. If you sit at your computer desk and work those hours all the way through for the whole 16 hour day, then yes, your performance will degrade even within the first day, let alone towards the end of the week.
It probably becomes a matter of cycling. How many hours are you overheating as opposed to working at optimal levels?
For me, I can chug at the desk for almost 16 hours straight. Take 5 minutes every 4-6 hours for a restroom break and to get something to drink and you're set.
However, that isn't optimal. I wouldn't be able to, nor would I want to, do that for a whole week. I would burn out and then need to go offline for a few days.
If you take that same 16 hours per day and break it up into 3 hour work windows, you have 3 hours of work, 30 minutes to 1 hour of kick-back, and then three hours of work. Granted, you lose out on four hours of actual work, but you are able to partially "reset" your mental state every three hours.
That allows you to clear your palate, so to speak, so that you can prevent yourself from going into a burn-out mode of working. You work three hours on the code, go splash yourself, get some snacks, and maybe catch a 30 minute cartoon or game and hit the code again.
Better yet, you do the three hours, and during your 1 hour break, you look over other bits of code, references, sketch outlines, and physically and mentally shift gears before going back into the work mode.
The other end of it is that you do need to crash.
Working 16 hours a day, assuming you get a full 8 hours of sleep, leaves you with no time to eat dinner or breakfast. That means the normal "breakfast", work, "dinner", sleep routine doesn't work. You would need to keep yourself fed throughout the day, in order to get your 8 hours as well as getting your 16 hours.
The problem with people who pull the 16 hours is that they then go and pursue other activities after that. This results in a lowering of their nightly sleep and a progressively more draining day. End result? Constant tiredness, more caffeine, and degradation in work quality.
In both cases, you're getting your 80 hour week, but in one case, you are actually getting more quality work out of it rather than shoddy work which will require time and effort to debug and fix.
If you work 80 hours that week, but need to spend the next week correcting the errors and bugs, you really haven't gained as much as you thought you did.
If a company was serious about pulling 16 hour days for their employees, they should really think about on-site housing, exercise programs, and time management/stress relief schedules. The longer you need people to work, the more you need to ensure that they are in top shape and form to do that work for those kinds of hours.
Winged Power Photography
There are good ones around, but they seem to be fewer and fewer in number.
Contemplate the fact that more and more software is being done like this, and be afraid, very afraid. The next time you get on a commercial airline flight, imagine that the software for their in-flight systems might have been produced that way. If you used an electronic voting machine, think about the fact that the software for the machine you used was probably produced that way.
Is this sustainable? Of course not. But the folks making these kinds of decisions figure they'll have their bonus and be long gone before anyone has to pay the consequences.
-- The pinhead celt
Physically there is a mental exhaustion limit, and no matter how much caffiene or other substances you pump into your body, your brain will just quit.
Sure, you can work for 80 hours a week. However, during that time your brain is burning chemicals. Sleep is required to regenerate the loss. Sleep deprivation/mental over-work is similar to any other mind altering state. You think you're doing fine and being just as productive, however in reality your performance gets worse and worse. And yes, when your brain reaches its limit IT WILL SHUT YOU DOWN! Passing out is usually the main result.
BTW, that's also not really good for the rest of your body, considering your brain is the regulator.
Doing long hours for short durations aren't bad. But the longer the period of time, the more self -defeating it becomes.
~X~
~X~
Uh...so why not work 45 hours a week instead and get the benefit of 9 extra error-free productive hours? It beats pushing yourself through 80 hours and only getting 36 hours of productive work out of it....
I have mod points now but I'd rather post a comment because I totally agree with parent and grand-parent posts.
I am working for a software company in Korea (I am not a korean). As you might already know, in korea, normal working hours are 8:30am to 12:00am (midnight), 6 days a week.
I have two limitations here. First, it is impossible for me to even sit for these many hours even if I am doing nothing. Second, I need to get in the flow to get any useful work done (but Yes, as mentioned in previous posts, if I am in the flow, I usually accomplish days work in hours).
So, my colleagues see me going home early (in comparision to them), and reading slashdot or browsing net and I feel it leaves a bad impression on them even though my work is being done on time and my overall productivity is much more than any of my colleague who stay late at night.
It has happened many times that my colleagues ask for help to solve a problem which they were not able to solve continously for days because of the mind block.
~Aha~
You're assuming he fixes his own bugs, and that his bugs don't cause problems for other people, thereby decreasing their productivity.
I would guess you're in a situation of working too many hours that you cannot get out of, and you are envious of the previous poster's situation. I am guessing you want out but seem stuck.
You have found the need to put the poster down personally proving you disagree with what he says. The difference between attacking the poster instead of his story tells me you don't want this type of story to be told. You are in an unfortunate situation. I don't envy you.
You will have a hard time getting the independence you want, until you see the truth in the previous story instead of fighting against it. By fighting against it you are helping to keep your self in an undesirable situation.
From your bitter comment, I don't expect to receive an answer -- what's better is no answer, but that you do some serious thinking instead. I hope you get things straightened out because it's never fun to be in a bad situation.
Whew! How do you feel now? :)
I have had projects where I was in the "zone" and sat in front of my computer cranking out code for 10+ hours with only eating/peeing/drinking breaks. Then there were times I couldn't get more than an hour or two of good programming done.
It all comes down to whether the noggin is working on task or if that brick wall has been hit. Obviously working 80 hours a week doesn't help the creative process unless one thrives in that kind of environment.
"Hard work never killed anyone." -- Some Dead Guy
They can quit, and if everything works out for them okay, they probably should, and probably do. But that's not to say that EA doesn't deserve criticism. Any shitty employer deserves criticism. Any shitty person deserves criticism.
Pretty much anything that's shitty deserves as much criticism as we in 40 hours/week can dish.
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.
The problem with this is that I like my job, work reasonalbe hours, and make a decent salary. I've gotten good raises both years that I've worked there, and the company is doing quite well. The work is interesting and I like the job, so I don't feel that it's worth resigning just because I don't get along with one coworker.
There were two guys sitting side by side. One would arrive after 9 and leave at 5. A lot of the day he stared out the window. The guy next to him worked huge hours and was always busy.
Comes profit share time (bonuses) the guy staring out the window got at least 3 time the other guy. Why? When he was staring out the window he figured out how to save the company $1,000,000. Effectiveness is not equal to busy, thinking is always better than useless activity.
The real problem is that you are perceiving that you have no power. So you have none. It took me a long time to learn this in business.
Socially, you need to stop being so nice. If someone makes a commnent like "Leaving early?" you make one back, at twice the volume about how you came in at 7am and where the f were they.
Get lots of work done, but deal a little attitude once in a while. Make a big deal about how quickly you finished something. You need to really let everyone know what your value is.
The best of the best often do not do this because they have reasonable egos. Drop that.
Also: When you are unhappy start interviewing immediately. There is nothing like other job offers to give your sense of perceived power a boost.
And why does coffee get a pass?
Admittedly amphetamines have their downsides, and some big ones especially with frequent use, but lets not kid ourselves, caffiene isn't exactly brussle sprouts.
Hacking your body chemistry is just like anything else, it can achieve the desired effect, or it can miss wildly. Often it involves trade offs.
I dunno about you but I sleep better, and feel all around better starting about 4 days after I quit a caffination cycle (usually I quit caffiene about the time I start to feel groggy in the morning).
Of course I eventually have a few nights where I am up too late (often involving the weekly poker game these days), and end up needing to see joe in the morning.
I make no illusions though. I am not pretending that joe is health food. Its drugs, pleasant, sweet smelling, black as as a steers ass on a moonless prairy night, tasty drugs. Definitly in the top five of non-medicinal drugs ever. (though if I ever get glaucoma and pot becomes medicinal, it will make it to 4 - and with the amount of time I spend in front of pc monitors, there is a fair chance)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I would push the boat out even further and say that 30 hours is about the maximum weekly programming effort (ie actually coding, not just being at work) that can be indefinately sustained. Every once in a while you might manage a bit more, but you cannot sustain that effort week in week out.
Programming, requires a lot of thinking about programming in addition to the actual coding. I would say that this is a 50-50 ratio. Sometimes you solve a problem when you are at home making dinner, riding your bike, playing with your kid, or having a beer with your buddies. Take into account meetings and communication with coworkers and suddenly 30 hours a week coding is the absolute max.
How do Europeans view these horrible working conditions under which Americans work?
We fail to really understand why you collectively put up with it. But we also fail to understand what part of your culture has gone (in our perspective) so horribly awry.
Here's a real story (from Europe) for perspective. The company I work for recently had almost all upper management replaced. The old management encouraged overtime by paying a 50% bonus for overtime (mandatory and voluntary alike), and many of us have used it (myself included).
The new managements take on this? We don't want overtime - we'll rather hire those 20 workers that your overtime pay equates to, and then make sure that, on average, you work 37 hr/week every year. If this means a couple of extra weeks of vacation in the summer, good for you. And if this means turning down an assignment now and then, that's regarded as being a responsible worker, who takes his obligations to not "burn out" seriously. Another poster relayed a study about the most effective workweek being 35 hr/week, so in the long run both management and I will benefit from this. There WILL be a few 60-70 hour weeks up to major deadlines, but we MUST find a way to take that time off to compensate. You are NOT regarded as a good worker if you fail to do so.
Oh, and my company is NOT the only one doing this.
Now call us naive if you want, and try convincing me that they'll just make me work long hours for no pay this way. That would be the standard US way - paranoia reigns supreme between employer and employee, and everyone is out to screw you over (os so people seem to think). It works differently here - most of the time, anyway. I think it is related to a cultural difference when it comes to teamwork. The "Lone Wolf" character is not as idolized in Europe as it seems to be in the US, and being a teamplayer is the norm, not the exception.
Finally, I think unions have been a factor in this too. I don't personally like the way most unions work politically (not a member of any for that very reason), but realistically they've helped remove a lot of the overworking explotation kind of crap still taking place in the US.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Because immediate, crappy results are better than delayed, well-done results to a PHB. Try reading one of those 'Management for Dummies' books or any managment book that claims to give results merely by reading it. Those books basically outline all the managment techniques that piss us off. My boss is great, but he still suffers from getting seduced by numbers.
'Can we upgrade to Solaris 10? It's 2 better than Solaris 8!'
but you know there's a thing called having a life.
You need time to spend all the money you make and then you need time to spend with the kids and your wife/husband, and then you need time for yourself and your hobbies/activities.
You know something called a life.
I would not work more than 40hrs/week, going over ONLY when needed.
Needless to say the project did not get delivered, all three of the programmers burned out (the other two left and I left about six months later).
So what went wrong with the project? Well firstly, at the beginning of it it became clear that if you admitted being able to program you were going to end up programming. So everyone with any sense claimed to be unable to and got to be an 'analyst' who analysed user requirements and wrote specifications, and only those of us who had been too naive or too junior to see that one coming ended up actually building anything.
Secondly, because this was a research project, people somehow didn't often feel the need to tie their specification down to actual data-structures or algorithms. On the whole the specifications we were working from specified mostly what the user should see on the screen, with a fair amount of hand waving. As the underlying algorithms actually involved a constraint-propagating inference engine, actually working out how to tie the interface to the functionality was a fair bit of work in itself.
Thirdly, the project was way too ambitious for the performance of the available hardware. But fundamentally all of that could have been overcome with better management and a better split of the workforce between programmers and 'analysts' (and better partitioning of the application - some of the guts of it could have been offloaded onto a mainframe, which we had sitting idle for the whole of the project).
In teams I've led since that time I've insisted that there should be no division between programmer and analyst, and that everyone has to be able to specify as well as build and, as far as possible, build what they specify. This on the whole has worked.
But the other lesson I learned is that you can work sixteen hour days for three months on end. It can even, at times, be a buzz, provided you're sufficiently supported and appreciated; and you can even produce very good work while you're doing it.
But. But you aren't going to produce anything worth having for the next six months afterwards. You're going to burn out, your health is going to suffer, and your ability to do good work is going to collapse. Your net productivity over a year of working 40 hour weeks is going to be a lot higher than three months working 80 hour weeks and nine months working 40; and that in turn is going to be a lot higher than twelve months working 60 hour weeks.
You cannot sustain high levels of creativity for ever. You will burn out. When you do burn out the best thing to do (if you can afford it) seems to be to go and do something completely different - non-intellectual - for several months; ideally, take a holiday.
If you have a boss who is demanding 80 hour weeks, you need to be very confident that he has enough commitment to you to fund that several month holiday at the end of it.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I didn't read through this entire page, but I saw a lot of debating about how overtime affects one's effectiveness as a programmer. Obviously, the more you work while tired, the more mistakes you make, and eventually you reach a point of negative contribution. I would like to point out another, indirect, but important, effect of overtime. My apologies if this has already come up.
:) At any rate, although I certainly experienced the effects of programming while tired -- I had to go more slowly to avoid making quite so many mistakes -- there was a greater problem brewing. I began to feel entirely unappreciated, and worse, I began to see the effects of this overtime on those around me.
The last time I worked substantial overtime was in 2000: about 215 hours in five months. That might not sound like much to some of you, but that included one 96-hour, 6-day stretch.
Have you ever seen the film Metropolis?
In the opening scene, we see the workers performing an actual "Death March". It's the same thing I see people do in the mornings in subway tunnels and staircases: they more or less stumble up the stairs in this eerie rhythm.
That is what despair looks like.
So when I see everyone around me droning on, working excessive hours, I begin to feel less human and more like cattle. I find it difficult to enjoy building software if those are the conditions under which I am forced to do it, so I lose interest in my job, my career -- what was once my passion.
I think that's a stronger and more diabolical effect of excessive overtime on programmers. They might just stop doing it; they might not see the point in giving that much of themselves, only to have employees say, "Thanks. Now work more." No amount of money is worth it.
And people here wonder why they don't have a significant other ...
I love working in the technology industry, but I would also enjoy having some time to myself and not dedicating my life to what? Programming a spreadsheet? Writing some code for a 3d game?
Get a life outside work people and stop making work your life.
Having thought about the relationship between drugs and work in humans and their societies for some time, I would like to extend your observations somewhat with my own experience.
In computer programming I notice there are three 'modes'. I only call them modes only because I can't think of a better name.
They are:
Brick-n-Mortar
Complexity
Creativity
Brick-n-Mortar is the simple, repetitive work that you need to do in every project. It's the tweaking of the user interface, the creation of non generic sql tables and setting permissions. It can't be made generic, it is project specific or just time consuming. The best drug for this kind of work is usually caffeine, because it's mostly boring stuuf you just want to complete.
Complexity is the system design on a macro-scale. How all the different parts fit together and interact with each other. It requires intense concentration of thought on many disparate entities and their relationships. The best drug for this work may be no drug at all. It may just be peace and quiet, meditation or relaxation. Alchohol or Cannabis or (mushies, DMT, ??) are NOT suitable for this mode.
Creativity is the part of the system that requires innovation or creation. A clever algorithm or a innovative use of an existing algorithm. Or creating a powerful and flexible framework that boosts productivity, or a feature with a high 'coolness' factor. The best drug for this mode of work may be Alchohol or Cannabis or some other drug that tends to make you inwardly reflective.
The problem I believe, is that someone will have one 'coding satori' moment under the influence of a particular drug, and will then generalise that state to all programming tasks. The overall result is that you are left with a system that can be brilliant in parts, but needs to be cleaned up by the person who follows (which on occasion has been me).
Cowardly Disclaimer: The author of this post does not engage in the taking of illegal drugs, and the above is purely academic speculation.