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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.
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.
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
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,
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/