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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?"
If we are talking about time to fix, it is entirely possible that programming mistakes can be more serious then medical mistakes. If you are a doctor and you kill someone, thats it. A few hours of paperwork, maby. If you write an OS over a single continious 48 hours hacking run, then you are stuck with that crap 25 years later, screwing up millions of peoples lives.
Hopefully we are all striving to achieve a good quality of life, not just good quality code.
The poster frames this question as to whether code quality hurts after working 80 hours per week. Shouldn't we be asking whether the quality of your life hurts instead? If working too much hurts our social and family life as well as our ability to participate in society's extracurricular activities, isn't that alone cause for alarm?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
You're absolutely right; he rarely takes a vacation. He's very introverted and seems to care little for his family, personal life, and own personal being. He's devoted to his job but I don't believe that he recognizes the harm that he does to the project with his working style.