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Are 10-11 Hour Programming Days Feasible?
drc37 writes "My current boss asked me what I thought of asking all employees to work 10-11 hour days until the company is profitable. He read something from Joel Spolsky that said the best way to get new customers is to add new features. Anyways, we are a startup with almost a year live. None of the employees have ownership/stock and all are salary. Salaries are at normal industry rates. What should I say to him when we talk about this again?"
'Nuff said!
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
My current boss asked me what I thought of asking all employees to work 10-11 hour days until the company is profitable. ... None of the employees have ownership/stock and all are salary...
Hahha ha ha ha haaaaaha ahaaa... Chortle... Yes. Well.
Please tell me where you work so I can avoid having anything to do with you folks...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why wouldn't all the employees leave? Why SHOULDN'T they?
Start your job hunt now.
I'd take a reduction in hours anyday.
Tell him he's crazy. But be much more polite than that.
They suck and you will get burned out.
You will also write shitty code, which will cost more to maintain.
Market's good, bail asap.
Yes, but not for long periods of time.
It isn't worth it; if you have "a boss" you should never work those kind of hours.
Give him three options:
More pay
Ownership stake
Look for your replacement
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
If you work 10-11 hour days, what do you do on the other 355 days of the year?
rewriting history since 2109
I'd tell him to get stuffed, that there's no way unless I was receiving a meaningful ownership stake in the company that I'd sacrifice my life to make things profitable.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
People must be paid. Stock options are a form of payment. But people don't work for free.
Effective? Hardly!
"until the company is profitable" is way too vague to work like that.
Need more useless stuff to read on teh internetz?
Seriously. You hire people to work at a start up, with start up risks, with start up health plans, and expect them to work start up hours without any ownership? To anybody worth hiring, that doesn't even pass the giggle test. Do *you* have stock? if not, why do you work there?
No.
Long answer: Heck no.
11-hour days is a fast track to high attrition unless everyone knows the probability of success is near certain.
Profit sharing. If those who put in the extra effort were rewarded by some form of profit sharing like stock options or partial ownership it could be made to work. The idea of working extra time with no extra pay or recognition is a sure way to lower morale. Lower morale leads to lower productivity and higher turnover. Lower productivity and high turnover will seriously impede profitability. Be sure he does the full cost/benefit analysis.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
I'd say the next time you talk about this should be the day you find a new job. Tell him you quit, and tell him why.
sounds like a great idea.
Seriously... working an occasional long haul is fine, but expecting and scheduling 5x10 is destructive to the lives of the employees and ultimately to the company. He'll get approximately the same output, but with lower company morale and higher employee turnover.
^^^this^^^
The actual planning might consider 3 months from now the company is going to be profitable. But it could very well change en route. I wouldn't want to give more than 50 hours a week for an indefinite period.
It's very simple. You are paid to think. The quality of your thoughts after 8 hours working in a day is not nearly as good as in the first few hours. Except for a short stint, the quality of thinking after 10 hours is so poor that you will spend more time cleaning up the messes you made when tired than you saved by working longer.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
Simple as that. That's of course assuming you could get the people to agree to it in the first place.
You can do long hours for a short period in order to get a particular feature out the door (but will have to give everyone plenty of time to recover afterward). Doing long hours on an open-ended schedule is just a burn-out disaster in the making. Of course, if all the developers quit, the company expenditure is reduced...
Unless your employees are completely and entirely dependent upon this job right now (i.e. not enough skills to get hired somewhere else, supporting families, etc.) or they are completely invested, idealistically, to the products you provide, I imagine a lot of them will leave. Folks don't tend to like being told, from on high, that they absolutely have to do something burdensome. So unless they zealously believe in your product, they'll find somewhere nicer to leave.
I would suggest digging up some research on how, in a given day, most employees only actually produce ~X many hours of quality work (I think I heard something like 4 - 6 hours at one point). Or, alternatively, your boss could address the employee body directly and, rather than demand that employees work those hours, ask for volunteers who would like to see the project succeed to volunteer. Folks prefer long work hours when they are there by choice.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
1. That you don't work for free, and not to expect you to.
2. If he wants extra hours of work a day out of employees, he'd damn well either better pay you for them, or hire more people to work the extra hours.
3. If it's not feasable to be profitable without paying your employees the equivilant of slave wages below minimum wage (once adjusted to hourly), then the business model is broken and this business does not deserve to remain in business.
4. Even at 8 hours, the mind can be completely shot if you're trying to push someone to work at absolute full throttle for those hours. Trying to increase that time will just add more errors, create stress and unhappiness in the workplace, and increase employee turnover. Adding MORE breaks and making it LESS stressful creates good work being done.
5. He should be fired as a boss for even suggesting this.
From my experience, the turnover rate is usually horrendous. With no stock in the company or added benefits from the company - most employees will rather find work somewhere else. If you want to entice salaried workers, offer them an incentive - or at the very least 1.5-2x over time.
My company has been working 12 hour days for 18 months. I don't think they are feasible in a normal economy (people would leave). I don't think they are feasible for too much longer (now having to bring in outside resources for the first time-- people are fully loaded).
However, they are providing us high quality lunch and dinner at our desks. The crew is mostly senior resources (35 to 50 years old) with 12+ years experience). They did this back in 1995-2000 and had a hard time hiring anyone for several years.
The quality is there in my opinion. SO mostly we are just giving up personal lives. I do not watch much TV any more. Every 4 or 5 weeks we get a week or two of 10 hour days as a break. Dinner is not provided those days.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is why fuckedcompany.com should be resurrected. Its services are still in need it appears.
To poster: As having been an employee in salary-only positions, salary+equity positions, and now a business owner with a small (6) group of employees, let me provide you advice from my 11 years of IT experience: Run as fast as you can. No employer should ever be asking you to work with no equity and without additional compensation for 60+ hours a week.
If the employees asked for a 25-37.5% raise for the same 8 hour day that would be identical to what he's asking from them right now...
That all progammers ask him for a doubling of salary and a halving of work time. Because you were reading on Slashdot that having free time and enough money is the best way to produce happy, productive employees?
Or suggest that if he wants to grow his business, then he either needs to employ more developers, or give his employees stock in exchange for the crunch,
BTW you should tell him to check out ReWork from 37signals. It makes a good counter argument to "features features features" (or, as I like to think of it: Microsoft vs Apple philisophy - both are evil overlords, but both take a different approach to building their dominions).
Think it would behoove you to check the article at Tech Crunch re: the Myspace employees. http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/bitterness-anger-and-betrayal-at-myspace/
You need to make sure the stake of the workers on par with the brass. If that is not up for negotiation, then options to consider need to include at a minimum telecommuting and/or rotational 3/4 day weekends.
I don't work more than ~45 hours per week unless it's my own fault that something is behind. That's because I'm salary, and overtime exempt. My priorities in life involve family being above work and the best way to show that is with time. Now if there is overtime, then I'd be happy to work more (to a point). Or if I owned the business and thus had an increase of profit with a greater expenditure of time investment, then I'd do so as well.
and that of course you are honored to work these hours. After all you are not an ungrateful slacker like others
Why Chinese Moms are Superior , in the Wall Street Journal, the daily reading of every corporate leader
There has to be something for people to look forward to for them to put up with crappy conditions. Callout people who get woken up every night at 3am continue to do the work because they need (or love) the job and know it's only for a week or two before they are rotated out.
If the company turns profitable because of your hard work will you get raises, bonus vacation time, or what? Just saying "Work Harder, Code Monkeys!" doesn't seem like it would work for long.
If all else fails, at least try to get free pizza.
If his business plan is to jam as many features as possible in and do so by taking advantage of employees he is going to fail. For success he should have a well thought out product that can be achieved in a reasonable manner. Sounds like he will be the victim of a death march for the sake of feature creep.
Never work overtime for longer than a week.
Why? Because your brain gets tired. You make more mistakes. Mistakes slow you down enough that, after more than a week of overtime, net productivity goes down. (This isn't an assembly line, it's brain work.)
If your boss can't wrap his brain around that, start looking.
Thank you that I at least have a job doing what I love, and as long as you sign my paycheck, I'll do whatever I am told to do.
In case it's not obvious, I'm of the young-and-idealistic type.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
On Friday night of 11 hour days you don't WANT me touching your codebase. One little mistake can cost you days of debugging. If your work forse is tired enough you might generate bugs faster than you can fix them.
Just pay us all hourly. And remember, we can anonymously talk about unionizing.. Many places to do that!
Shh.
There's legitimate reasons why employees at a startup would need to put in tons of hours until things get up to speed. The flipside is that the potential for a large payday is significantly greater for the startup employer than for an established firm.
It seems therefore logical that the proper arrangement is to offer the employees a chunk of the profit in exchange for getting the push to release done on-time and with all the features. If your employer doesn't want to pay you like a startup, he has no right to ask for startup-esque sacrifices. Conversely, if the employees are not willing to push hard for release in exchange for such a bonus, they should find employment at a more well-established firm.
For an elegant argument against crunch time, point him towards Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister. And if he want's to hear it from Joel, check out this article
If he still thinks 11 hour days are smart, you should probably be looking for a smarter boss.
What should I say to him when we talk about this again?
Tell him he's as clueless as he is greedy.
Or just refer him to this post, and I'll tell him for you.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You can add the "what's in it for me" aspect by noting that an intense environment like a startup gives the programmers experience that's hard to get anywhere else, and he'll have put the resources into that training. Does he really want them to take that value to a competitor?
The 'closer' this points towards is "PAY UP DUDE!", but the pro's leave that implied. (Unless he's a PHB at heart.)
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
The only way you can keep that kind of focus for any duration is if you have something at stake. Basically, what the owner is saying is: "I want you to work like an owner in this business with none of the upside". It sounds like your boss in an unreasonable, greedy asshole. Negotiate equity or get out.
Masochist-Texas
Ask for a second big LCD screen per employee (that's supposed to increase productivity) and see the reaction.
If the reaction is negative... escape
It has to be balance between the employer/employee for this thing to work. If the employee gets awesome compensation and the employer doesn't get something worthwhile in return, it doesn't work. Likewise, if the employee doesn't get decent compensation and the employer gets some valuable product, it doesn't work. If the employee and the employer both benefit, then everyone wins and there is balance in the give/take. In those unbalanced situations, either an employee quits or they're canned.
I suppose you could take advantage of the economy and low ball new hires and work them like dogs, but that's a pretty gruesome way to run a business.
Here, this link is all you need to know: http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php. It's a bit of a wall of text, but you can read the first part and then skip to the end, which contains this nugget:
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Broken code drives customers away.
If the only question on the table is how hard you are working and your boss doesn't know enough to have a feel for what that is going to do to people the company is being mismanaged. Sometimes a product is so compelling a mismanaged company makes it to profitability but that doesn't happen when you have to work for it.
In your case I would ask if your boss is willing to pay 4 hours of overtime to every programmer until the company is profitable.
Your boss is asking the wrong questions, and proposing the wrong solutions. Unless you enjoy it get out.
I don't even think 8 hours a day is healthy. Plus, we are at a stage of our tech evolution that there is no NEED for new software to be made quickly, new stuff is coming out all the time from various companies and the open source community. If there is a need, it will be filled. There is no profit motive necessary anymore.
So tell him to suck a lemon. You might lose your job, but its better than losing your mind.
When I worked for the federal government we had the option to work four 10 hours days and then got to take Friday off. It was pretty sweet especially if you could go down to your car and take a brief power nap during lunch.
The thing to do is to ask for a cut. Not that I would take it, people working for weeks 10-11 hours straight every day for no good reason tells me the entire program is a fail.
Probably the best programmer I know outright states that he can't productively code for more than four hours a day; but he gets more done in those four hours than most people can do in a week.
If you outright tell people to work for 10-11 hours a day, first your good programmers will all leave. Next, those who can't immediately get better jobs will take long lunches, show up a little late and leave a little early. If you enforce time in-seat somehow, you will have more and more people spending time on slashdot or facebook.
Okay, do it politely... I would just explain that they would be asking too much of staff and would likely lose many of them rather quickly. Perhaps if there was some real incentive (like stock/profit sharing) they might have a better shot at it- but if they are only paying standard wages on salary- it isn't worth it. If he asks you point-blank if you will leave- just say something like "I have no immediate plans to leave, and I can't make any future determination at this time." (If it were me- I would probably start making plans to leave anyway...)
Tell him that too much overtime is counter-productive, because the error count goes up faster than the extra work does. Anyone who can work much over 45 hours a week without suffering a drop in effectiveness isn't putting out full effort while working less than that. If he doesn't agree, find another job fast -- he doesn't know what he's doing.
I don't know your particular circumstances .. maybe you have a family and working those hours is unacceptable. Maybe you are single and don't mind. Whatever. But if you decide to do long programming days, you need to get additional compensation for it.
You mentioned everyone is on standard industry rates - that rate doesn't assume 10-11 hr days. Raise the salary (or go OT, or some other compensation that seems fair to you.) Else, say no.
(BTW, I'm amused that your boss had to read that "the best way to get new customers is to add new features". Seems obvious.)
Six months ago I began working solo on a commercial programming project. I've been working 16-18 hours each day, most days, because that's what I feel is required to bring the project to market in a reasonable time. It would be great if I had a team of people and we could all work 8-hour-days, but I don't, so long hours are required.
It sounds like your boss is in a similar situation. He wants to market a product of X size, requiring Y amount of work, in Z time. What he's asking you is: Are you, and the rest of the staff, the right people for this project? Are you willing to do Y amount of work in Z time?
The tone of your question to slashdot is, I think: How do I tell my boss that this is an unreasonable request, while still keeping my job? In other words: How do I dictate the terms of my employment?
Really the question should be to yourself, and it should be exactly the same question that your boss is asking you: Are you the right person for this job?
It's perfectly acceptable for you to decide that you aren't the right person. Maybe all of the other staff are the wrong people too. But the job is what it is. I don't bat an eyelid to working a 12-hour day, but maybe that isn't right for you, and that's fine.
Good luck, anyway. I hope the situation can be resolved in a way that works for everyone.
(Note: my answer would be very different if your boss was asking you to do more work for the same money, but as you didn't say anything about that I assume that isn't the case.)
Tell him to give everyone a 50,000 share stock grant, and then ask them to work extra hours for a specific period of time.
"Go fuck yourself".
MySpace had their employees working like this back about October, and look where they are now!
drc37 => github.com/drc37 => twitter.com/drc37 => David Cook => bloomfire.com/about-us So, in this story we have the tale of Bloomfire, a company founded in 2010 that mashes up YouTube, Yahoo Answers, and Facebook. I'm currently in a startup operation myself, and I can relate to where you are coming from and your boss. I'm an owner in my situation, which seems to make a pretty big difference on the level of time I'm willing to sacrifice for the company to be successful than some of my employees. As a principle, this should just be another exercise in cost/benefit analysis for you. Is it worth it to you to sacrifice that time with your family to make this company successful? If it's not, start looking elsewhere. If you believe fully in the company, and there is some feeling that you'll be rewarded if it is successful, get it in writing. Also realize that your employees will do the same thing. You may not lose any headcount, but you'll have to be creative in finding ways to not torpedo your morale. These mashup sites aren't my cup of cocoa, but maybe you think you can add something original. One principle is to do your best to not give up your most valuable asset (time) for nothing in return. As a fellow BYU grad (assuming I stalked you down accurately), my advice is to talk it over with your family and pray about it. Good luck!
Not JUST no but HELL NO!! unless it's 4x10. Don't create a precedent.
First, demanding you just work more hours shows a complete lack of understanding of the development process. Forcing programmers to work more hours does NOT equal more results. It equals more turnover. Which can equal LESS results.
He is asking you for a sizable chunk of your life. What is he willing to offer?
-- Can he offer a decent incentive, for meeting MEASURABLE, OBJECTIVE goals, which you have REASONABLE chance of achieving?
-- Do you trust him to keep his word?
-- Will he get off your back while you get down to business?
-- Will enough of the team buy in to these targets to make them achievable? Not just deliberate slackers, not everyone can afford to work the same hours. Will the incentive be pro-rated?
If you like the answers to these questions, then you can decide if you're willing to go for it.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
A) no one can work those ares ina long term sustained hour and produce more then a 40 hour work week.
B) He will loose all the in house knowledge base
C) The company will fail
D) Tell him to stop reading Joel and actually think about creating a core base of customers.
The only way to compensate fr that si to give the employees a sizable piece.
There is no way I will work more then 40 unless I am extremely well compensated.
Seriously, why would I piss 60+ hours a week for the same pay as 40? That's a suckers game.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why not. I'm sure the company will quickly become profitable not having to pay any of your salaries after you've left.
Tell your bos the following.
Let is all your programmers be one day free at work, they may not work on current tasks.
They can program whatever they want, let them do it once a month.
Only ask of them to give a small presentation of what they did.
This has been done in other programming companies too.
The effect was that people started to work on like old issues which they never got time for, or new things some related but others not related to the product.
In a year they had enough new gadgets to create a new product line and the had enough 'funny' code to improve their product gadget factor.
Conclusion creativity doesnt come with working hours, but rather by reflection, by doing strange things, or taking a set back.
The best ideas arise often when you sleep, your not a typing monkey.. your human people need to pay attention to live like humans to get products for humans.
How do you think Apple does it, by using coding monkeys ?
If that's not a recognised law of programming, it should be.
I remember pulling an all-nighter on a coding project in college before taking a 2 hour sleep break before the final stretch. After 2 hours I looked at the code again and was aghast at the garbage which seemed perfectly sound, logical code before the break.
(I fixed those things up and it worked pretty good on first compile.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well known decline in productivity per hour beyond eight. If you're really working hard to the bone it probably starts to drop off at more like five hours. Some of the best minds I have run across suggest that your active work should be limited to perhaps even four hours per day with a lot of percolation. Depends on the nature of the work.
Do you believe in the viability of the company? What the hell is your reward for making things work out for the owners? I once worked for over two months without a paycheck in a small company where the CEO just didn't give a shit. He would lie to anybody about anything for his own short term interest. He never sold his company airplane even after he laid off nearly all staff. I was the last developer remaining from staff until I finally escaped to another company in a horrible economy. As far as I know his company fell completely apart, despite his faith in himself.
Long days/hours can arise as a necessity of the peaks and valleys in IT workflow. Anything more than occasional needs for some extra hours merely amounts to poor management and planning or a greedy attempt to exploit staff.
Its an interesting graph in there.
Work done increase till certain number of hours and then it declines.
May be your boss needs to know that
This can work for short periods of time, up to a couple of weeks IF you pay an overtime bonus to the sallaried employees. My company does this and most people actually look forward to the infrequent times when it is needed because we are well compensated for it (in addition to our profit sharing program).
www.blueapples.org
As soon as profitability is achieved, how can the programmers go back from 10-11 to 8 hours / day. The company will no longer be profitable. Unless the boss provides incentive to work more (such as profit sharing), you'll have some pretty pissed of programmers. In the end, this could cost more then the benefit of higher productivity. As a programmer myself, in an 9 hour day, I can only code for about 4. My attention to detail quickly wanes if I try much more than that, and one false line of code could result in hours of debug time.
and so would you if you had to live with my wife!
Asking a question like that shows how little your boss values his employees, their productivity, and their mental well-being. For that matter, it shows how clueless he is about office politics. Is he trying to weed out the people who don't care deeply for his startup? Hint: NONE of the salaried staff care as much as he does.
Why on earth would salaried staff agree to sacrifice their ability to actually have a life for nothing but boss kudo points?
In order to get people to sacrifice for their employer, you need a well-understood, fair incentive. Companies pay for expert employees' time. Your boss needs to put his money where his mouth is and pay hourly for overtime. The problem is, to avoid abuse you would need to be measuring productivity fairly accurately, and since you're a startup you're probably running your projects casually.
I've worked at companies that tried things like this in half-baked ways. Endless process improvement meetings, coworkers that hate you for staying late for nothing, productivity falling through the floor as people try to game the system. I've even seen people damage their personal relationships beyond repair "for the project". It's not a pretty picture, and your boss needs to understand the magnitude of the possible consequences.
If your boss wants to add a team-wide incentive program for beating a deadline, fine. But if your salaried staff are happy, he shouldn't fuck with that, and he should be regularly encouraging them to get the hell out of the office at 5PM so that they are happy to come back in the morning.
Want to get more done during business hours? HIRE MORE STAFF.
Tell him to assign profitable tasks. Focus on teaching the team about how to be profitable, practice being profitable. Be transparent about what activities make something profitable. Businesses can definitely be profitable working 40 hours, but the team has to be in tune with how the business makes money.
I remember an anecdote which may not be generally applicable. But I was once given a 2 week task to add an inventory management tool to some portal software. When the costs were explained to me, I was motivated to make a good product within that 2 weeks. I understood that the customer's time and money was valuable. We met the 2 week schedule with 1 late Friday night of coding (total of about 84 hours). Working 10-11 hours each day would have been overkill. True, I wasn't in a startup company, but being attuned to everyone needs and fixing a problem is what makes something like that successful.
The fact that your boss would read Spolsky and then ask you what you think about it raises a question: Does he know what makes his business profitable? If he can't explain this to you, then how in the world is 2 more hours/day of everyone's time going to fix that simple problem?
I would suggest to not make it mandatory. You may get some to work 10's. You may get some to do 9's, and you'll have your usual group of 8's. Mandatory OT blows for salaried people, Those that don't have a lot going on in their lives or don't mind giving a little extra will do so without a lot of question. Your employees will stay happy. I also suggest your boss creating a realistic time line for profitability and perhaps sharing that with the rest of the employees.
I personally work over time every day, but I normally do not put in more than 45 to 47 hours a week. Sometimes my over time will just be an extra 15 minutes a day to finish up whatever I was working on. I've also put in 16 hour days where we had a lot going on and every little bit of extra help was gladly accepted. Every year I get a bonus that's larger than most of the other people at my level where I work. So perhaps some sort of incentive along with the over time would be helpful. It doesn't even have to be a cash incentive. Some people just like having a nice place to work at, so maybe a catered lunch would be preferred.
Telling people to do mandatory over time is an option. Seriously, ask for volunteers first. If a large majority helps out, those that don't will get shunned and move on elsewhere quickly. In my personal experience those who aren't willing to at the very least do a little extra sometimes are also the people who half ass their work and are malcontents. We all value our personal time, but really, how many of us have so much going on in our personal lives that we can't give 2 or 3 hours a week when it's asked? Those that are so gung-ho against it are those that never get anywhere in their careers. They miss those opportunities to show that they can do more and talk to the higher-ups who are still there working.
"if you can't do it with brainpower, you can't do it with manpower - overtime," is axiomatic with me. - Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson
Leave. Nothings worth it. Tell the boss to learn c++ or whatever language you use. Nothing at all is worth that.
Depending on what state you are in, there may be meaningful differences between salaried and salaried exempt. Differences that matter a lot, if someone complains about unpaid overtime. In California, for instance, if one assumes that programmers are computer professionals (and the courts haven't, by and large), they can be salaried exempt, but only if they make over $40/hour, or about $80k/year. Less than that, or if they're not computer professionals, they can be salaried, but not salaried exempt, which means they still get overtime.
A lawsuit like that can put even a successful company out of business very quickly.
These three things work for free--which are you?
A tool
A mule
A fool
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
or hire some co-op students. The quality of work you're going to get when you're working that long is not going to be optimal. Also you're going to burn out your employees and create a terrible work environment. You would probably do just as much work in 6 hours as 8 as 10, productivity drops. Send him a link to google scholar and tell him not to listed to people that don't know anything about what you do.
If your salary is prorated to 8 hours days, well then tell him how much of a raise it would be for 10 hours and then add 1-5% as you're taking a lot of personal time out of your life which is irreplaceable.
10-11 hour workdays are perfectly feasible and can actually be easier on you than the typical 8 hour workday.
You are getting three day weekends, right?
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
Sure, it's possible. People in the game industry are known to do 100 hour weeks. It's also a good way to produce low quality code, and burn your staff out.
In your case, the hours are doable for a while. But it's important to use a carrot. Will there be bonuses when the company is profitable? Stock? Profit sharing? Extra vacation time? Do people feel invested in wanting the company to succeed?
So yes, it's doable. But you have to give people a reason to want to do it beyond "or else." That one will just send your best people elsewhere.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It's ok to ask for more hours, if there is more pay, if not, some compensation should be expected.. For example, you just don't "add" new features, you need to schedule these things. So, getting the crew to work extra hours for 2 to 3 weeks at a time in between every month, that's reasonable. If more money can't be given, then extra hours could be compensated in free time in the down times or some other perks. In the long run, however, programmers burn out. So, I don't recommend this as a normal strategy. Only to get some of the critical items out there.
is to have something they want and show it to them. As for the 11 hour work days with no extra compensation - compensation does not matter. Google for programming death march and see what others have experienced with this "great idea". Perhaps one or two long days before a major roll-out may be feasible occasionally but no individual or team can keep this pace for a prolonged time. If more time is required perhaps your company needs to hire a programming team in India? Then you can develop around the clock.
Oh, I liked the captcha for this post "massacre" - something that could be coming to an office near you.
Tell your boss (politely!) that if he expects people to work like it's their own company, that really works best if it *is* their own company (at least partially). One of the reasons I'm self-employed (not in the US btw) is that I was expected to work long hours and didn't think I should do that for someone elses money. Yes it's capitalism at work. No I didn't have to play along - I can be a temp worker just as good when I hire myself out to others. And otherwise I can always get a new job. Same for you and your co-workers. If your boss goes under, they can move elsewhere. It's HIS company, it's HIS income and it's HIS problem.
There is no reason anyone should make the company profitable just for someone else. They get paid for their work, and do (I assume) their best. If that's not enough your boss should probably rethink his business model. "Add more features" hardly ever works in my experience, if your base product sucks or isn't marketed well enough. More marketing, now that might work, as long as your product is halfway decent. And lowering everyone's salary by a third (hourly rates in any case) will not help.
Even if everyone thought this was a brilliant idea, in practice 11 hour workdays are no more productive than 8 hour days. Or even 6 hour workdays. Unless you are doing mindless repetitive work, but in creative professions you hit diminishing returns rather fast. So tell your boss to come up with something else, like:
A) asking customers their opinion on what you should do in order for them to buy either more licenses or different stuff from you
B) better salespeople. You *do* have salespeople, do you?
C) more and better marketing.
D) stock options (last resort, panic-mode)
I see that Joel thinks marketing and sales are not worth it. He's right about the affiliate thing and others, but he forgets his own huge marketing scheme: his blog. If you don't have something similar, find yourselves someone who understands marketing software, because it *is* important. I completely agree with him on asking your customers what they need. That's the basis of any sale and often overlooked.
Good luck.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Sounds like the company is taking a really big gamble. Stay with it if You're cool with such a gamble. Personally, I'd run for the hills.
TCAP-Abort
Working harder is not the same as getting better. Longer hours also do not translate into more money for the company, less bugs or better code. All it translates into is more tired coders who make more bugs and probably do less as they have less downtime.
Unless you love it and have fun doing it, it's a bad idea. Don't take life so seriously.
ayottesoftware.com
I can program for 10-11 hours a day. Now, I won't produce as much working code as I would if I called it a day after 6, but he didn't ask you whether it was sensical or effective.
Realistically? 90% of the time, past about 5-6 hours, additional time is gonna be antiproductive. I will be slow and worn out and making stupid mistakes that are hard to fix.
Now, there's exceptions. I once managed a sustained period of 10+ hour days for, oh, a few weeks. This was when I was on (legally prescribed, I might add) Schedule II controlled stimulants, and didn't have to do ANYTHING but code; people would take me out for food and order for me. And after, I think, five weeks of that, I spent the next entire WEEK recovering, and by the end of that week I could mostly process spoken language again.
But seriously, if the boss isn't thinking in terms of "and then after a couple of weeks, they all have to take a full week off doing NOTHING work related", the boss is a twit. It's not sustainable.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Sure. The problem is that multiple proven, highly effective ways of losing customers are so closely related to quick and cheesy ways of adding new features. I'll name a few:
* Adding bugs.
* Adding complexity.
* Overloading support.
* Slowing maintenance.
* Making just about everything more expensive, including features customers will decide they need in the future.
I could go on and on, but this is enough to show that going on a new feature spree isn't a no-brainer.
Now from a marketing perspective, who does this better than anyone else? Apple. For many years Apple earned the sneers of tech heads everywhere by keeping its products on a strict feature budget. They *never* introduce a product that does everything you could easily imagine it doing. Instead they:
(a) do a really nice job on the features they deliver and
(b) regularly release a *small* number of new features, small enough they can really hit the marketing ball out of the park when they explain to customers why they absolutely *have* to chuck their old iPod and buy a new one.
The second point is really the key. Apple doesn't get ahead of themselves, they never do it all in one go. Sometimes the new features are really quite impressive, other times they're things Apple could easily have done earlier, but they've timed to nudge the herd down the upgrade track.
The first gen Touch didn't have a built in speaker. That's not a deal breaker, because the first gen was so cool. Then Apple introduced the second gen, which really was only a tiny bit spiffier, but it *did* have a speaker. Then every time a happy 1st gen owner could have used that feature, he'd be thinking, "Gee I love my 1st gen, but I'd be just a *little* bit happier if I bought a 2nd gen." This leaves *everyone* happy. The owner now has his spiffy new iPod with speaker, and Apple has sold two nearly identical devices to a customer for much less than twice the cost.
The only people who are unhappy are cranks who insist on believing Apple does features this way because it's too stupid to come up with new features or see their value to the customer. It's *because* they see the value of new features that they dole them out this way, so they get the greatest possible mileage out of them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Been there, done that, burned out. And to be quite frank, I'll never work for the bosses (yeah, there were two of them during the time that I was there) that insisted upon those types of hours. In fact, I got reamed in one performance review because I wasn't putting enough hours... apparently the 80-90 hours/week that I was doing just wasn't cutting it.
"Go Fuck Yourself"
While for short periods of time working long hours may help to finish a project or ensure the smoothest launch possible it won't help in the long run.
Productivity typically declines as hours get long and this effect is magnified if the employees feel that work is causing issues with family life. I don't have sources readily available but productivity tends to suffer after approximately 9 hours without an extended (multiple hours away from work) break. This varies by employee and industry but is pretty consistent.
So it may help in the short term but it will ultimately cost him more money as productivity decreases and employee turn over increases.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Speaking as someone who once worked those hours early on in my carreer, I can say this - 10-11 (or 16 or 24) hour days are gifts your employee gives you. They are not something you can ask for more than a handful of times, in exceptional cases (that better have not been caused by a decision you made).
What you can do is set goals, and explain what the goals are for. If your employees agree they are worthy goals, they will work for them, sometimes harder than you expect.
But if they decide you don't know what you are doing, there is no reason they will seek to work extra to support you, and certainly will leave if you push them harder yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And dont you come back no more no more.
No.
You can only manage that kind of effort temporarily. Soon your work goes into the shitter, despite feeling that you're getting more done. And you need an equivalently long recovery period just to get back on track afterward.
Being asked to do it for an indeterminate amount of time isn't a good sign.
Complaining about 10 or 11 hours? My work day is 1000 hours, like most peoples'. I guess there really are only 10 kinds of people: those that complain about work hours and those that don't.
Three hour lunches.
All employers want their programmers to churn out perfect code in no time for free. Make sure yours gets a realistic picture. Also make sure to discuss the issue with other employees before the next time the issue comes up; the boss can fire one, he cannot fire all.
In my country, I would be tempted to show my boss the finger at the mere suggestion of taking 2-3 hours a day of my life for his profit. I would surely contact my union, but I am told these are not readily available in the US. I am pretty sure that except for some really special jobs asking something like that would be illegal: think about it, he is asking you to become his slaves for a few hours a day.
You should not give your boss the idea that he can take time from you without paying for it. You can of course negotiate, but don't get shafted. You can e.g. come up with a plan for the excess hours to be paid when the company becomes profitable: in practice it is like the employees lending money to the company (which, being a startup, has likely already some debt and therefore high capital costs in the banks). Payback should have precedence on any dividends or bonuses, and a reasonable lending rate for both parts should be agreed, e.g. the Federal Reserve interest rate but it really depends on how much faith you have in the company. Ask him to pay the extra hours more than the ordinary ones, and that he gives flexibility on when you put in the extra hours on top of that. Extra points for not forcing anybody to work overtime, but allowing people to do it if they want the money.
He may not grant all requests, but make sure you make a deal out of it that is good for you too. Remember that if you want any chance at success, you must stand with (most of) the rest of the workforce on a common front.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Is your boss going to put in 12 hour days? Unlikely -- most people in middle management hate giving up their time away from work when they can sucker an inexperienced staff to do it for them. FWIW, it sounds like your workplace environment is about to become toxic -- it's NOT a good sign if your boss is asking you to work longer hours for the same of pay and no additional perks. That has the whiff of desperation, and desperate companies often start treating their staff like garbage. In your position, I'd start sending out resumes. Immediately.
Adopt the out at 5 approach from the Dilbert Principle. Aim to get your work organised and finished by 5 pm. Give your customer good and reliable releases, no customer wants a feature rich product that does lots of things poorly. However do not take the rest of the book as a how to for business, I swear people have read this book where I work and have not realized the saracasm.
If I understand your post correctly, it sounds like you are working for a startup where people consistently work 9 or 8 hour days (or less). As someone who has worked as a developer for 15 years (in both startups and large companies) and who has also started my own successful company and grown it to a market leader, let me share my opinion on how startups work. Remember that the vast majority of startups fail. To make a startup successful, you need either:
(a) An incredible amount of pure dumb luck and good timing (very rare)
(b) A little bit of luck PLUS an incredible amount of hard work and dedication
If you go to the owner of your startup and say "We will work harder if you pay us more", that indicates that you don't have the intrinsic drive needed to make a startup successful. If on the other hand you go to the owner and say: "Listen, we are going to work as hard as humanly possible to make this successful. We'll work all nighters, 18 hour days, whatever -- we will do what it takes on a consistent basis, making sure that we don't get so burned out that we're making bad decisions or doing poor quality work. In return, we expect to have ownership in this company [aka stock options or even better, a straight grant of common stock if you can negotiate it], to be compensated well, and to have a productive work environment. We don't need rules on minimum hours per day -- in fact if you need these rules to make people work harder, we probably have the wrong people on the team."
If you're not willing to get on board with that, you don't have what it takes to make a startup successful and you should seek work elsewhere. If the owner of the company is not willing to get on board with that, then HE (or she) does not have what it takes to make a startup successful and you should seek work elsewhere.
Cheers
10-12 hours a day is not a sustainable pace IMHO.
G.F.'d!!! is the first reaction I'd have.
But this is classic on too many fronts:
* Profitability is his, or the owner's, problem, NOT yours - your job is to DO THE WORK and NOTHING MORE.
* Starting with a list of features is the best way to kill a product. Instead, keep 'NO FEATURES' uppermost in your mind. Obviously you can't write something with NO features - its purely an abstract goal but its a valuable one.
Instead of features - DESIGN. And prototyping - write test versions, make them work, analyse the mistakes and misconceptions, throw it away and write it again. This cycle gets quicker and quicker.
What customers want primarily (ignore Features, they will come, but add them slowwwwly, dont be GNOME and stuff everything up) are:
* RELIABILITY - ABOVE ALL - If it crashes they will walk
* EASE OF USE - It doesnt have to be perfect, it just has to have an interface that is learnable in a short time - the interface may have nothing to do with how the engine works too - don't be a Steinberg and make the mistake of assuming the users care how the interals are organized - they don't and shouldn't have to (most of the time)
Long hours will just cause resentment and everyone will leave and the company will collapse. Thats how it always goes. That kind of rabbit mentality only works for tiny companies of 3 or 4 people where they are all old highschool friends and knew what they were getting into. That doesn't apply here.
mention a red stapler, and something about burning.
Oh.... that's in DECIMAL?
Sorry, carry on.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
I'd tell him to put the crack pipe down and back away. It's one thing to work long hours if you have a vested interest in the company, or even if it's crunch time to buckle down and get project completed or back on track to the completely ridiculous timeline set, but something altogether different when it's just another job. Any reasonable person would understand that you don't get a grip more for nothing, so whether it be bonus incentives or other monetary compensation, or loosening that death grip on company ownership and profit sharing - either way, if no compensation is given, then you'll end up with the same amount (or less) of work done while requiring the long hours, and have a staff of disgruntled employees to boot.
How do 10 to 11 hour days compare with the number of hours you are working now? How serious are you about your job?
In my field (academia), if you aren't putting in 12 hour days during the week, and 4 to 8 hour days on the weekends, you aren't going to make it to the top. Burn out? If you do, you will be leaving academia.
I've been tangentially associated with two startups, and have observed many started by my colleagues who decided to leave academia. They have similar work patterns, except that they also get ownership stakes; in academia, the rewards are mostly intangible.
Both of those examples (me, and the folks I've know from startups) are for people that are serious about their work. The startups I'm familiar with are all worth at least USD 50 million (one is in the Fortune 300 ... that one was started by my father and his friends -- I hear stories of how hard they worked, and growing up I saw how my father was in his lab on weekends, every weekend).
So, do you want your startup to be successful? Does it realistically have a chance? Then people there should be working for meager salaries (to extend the non-profitable period), and lots of stock options.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
He wants 25% or more extra effort from the developers, is he prepared to offer something worth 25% or more of their salary extra in return for it or does he expect charity? Will he define 'successful' in writing in a formal employment agreement? Will that include some sort of protection against being tossed out the door uncompensated as soon as that success happens?
Perhaps offering telework so employees can do productive work rather than sitting in traffic would help.
The next issue up is effectiveness. What makes him think people can be effective working 10-11 hours a day for a long stretch?
Of course, unless he is willing to make this a true offer that individuals can decline without penalty (other than not getting whatever is offered in return), he should prepare to watch what productivity there is now walk out the door.
At every technology company I'm aware of, 55 hour weeks are normal. Someone who works 40 hours isn't going anywhere professionally. Most techies I know are at or a little beyond the threshold for a schedule that causes burnout in the long run. So, rather than accuse your co-workers of being slackers, I will assume that what your boss is really asking after is an extra 10-15 hours per week per person. As weekly hours go up, so does likelihood of burnout, and time to burnout drops. Ask too much, and it is only a matter of time before everyone that stays becomes nasty, stupid, or both. That is leaving aside the idea of asking for more work without offering anything in return. A significant fraction of those who can find another job will, and he'll be left with the loyal, the lazy, and the ones that couldn't find anything better.
Great opportnity! ;)
10-11 hours per day is great, just ask 3 days per week
Since he likes Joel, point him to http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html (especially item 3 under "while we're at it": "Don't let managers badger developers into shorter estimates").
Don't be fooled by that. Management always gives some abstract time period during which the employees will need to sacrifice. It's like "War on drugs" or "War on terrorism". You'll work like a bitch, and in the end get nothing.
Don't tell me that your company gets revenue from advertising, too.
Well, he's listening to Joel already, so that's a plus that you should use to your advantage. Send him the article on Painless Software Schedules:
And the beatings will continue until morale improves!
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's bad to solve a problem like that by working harder (unless you are presently very lazy), because you'll be stuck working harder forever to maintain profitability.
If your product is not appealing to clients, you should make a deliberate effort to find what it's missing or what's wrong with it, and fix only that. If the problem is entrenched competition, you need to differentiate yourself from the competition by offering something different. If you've got that down, but it still isn't selling, you should hire a different salesmen. But don't ever just race to the bottom on quality and price, that's not a good place to be.
You should say "See you later I am going somewhere else with reasonable conditions".
However, if you can't say that you should say "Excellent idea sir".
How many people can really work 10-11 hours a day solidly, every day, and produce high quality code?
If you really want to raise productivity, how about:
* get rid of all unnecessary meetings (those that do not directly move the project forward)
* get rid of all unnecessary paperwork (including bureaucratic bullshit like timesheets)
* hire dedicated sales support rather than distracting core engineers
* give engineers a door to close and respect it
* encourage working off-site and/or out-of-hours when deep concentration is required
* encourage engineers to work at time of peak efficiency (don't make a night person work early, etc.)
* establish a culture of no working on weekends
Good engineering management like this can raise productivity 50-100%.
As many have said, longer hours do not necessarily translate into less bugs, more features or a better product in a reduced period of time. Changing processes if they are broken and motivating employees to work more effectively are going to be better bets in the long run (and probably even in the short term). Brute-forcing software development is not sustainable.
On the subject of motivation, you can point your boss to a couple Dan Pink videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc (short version)
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html (long version)
I am not sure what "space" you are developing in or what processes you use in your software development, but it may be worth considering Agile processes if you are not currently using them. They are not panacea, but if implemented properly they can bring some gains in efficiency and the effectiveness of the programmers you have now at the hours they are working.
In April, I was working the normal 8-5 M-F, but then 7 days a week for 6 weeks, I was working from 1am-5:30am. Now, if you do the math, during the week, that was 13.5 hours a day during the week. You have no idea as a manager what that does to an employee. I did it because it was my job whether I liked it or not. Do you want to know what happened to me? I was fired for my horrible work quality. Now, before this started and I was working this shift, I am 100% serious when I say I was on the fast track to a promotion. The boss said that he wanted to give me more responsibility and start having teams of people under me. I was doing great. 13.5 hours a day then happened. Within 6 weeks, I went from a "superstar about to get a promotion" employee to so bad that I was fired. It only took 6 weeks for my work quality to drop me so low to where I got fired.
I have later found out that my boss put me up to that to get rid of me thinking I would simply quit. There is not that much of a difference between 10 hours and 13.5 (only 3.5 hours), and I am 100% serious where I say that I now go to a sleep specialists to figure out how to fix my brain when it comes to sleep since I have some messed up sleep deprivation from it now. Lucky for me, most health insurance plans do not cover sleep issues (including my current plan)
If you need to push more on your employees, you better be prepared for the aftermath. You say 10 hours is no big deal, but seriously, if your employees are anything like me, they will do it to prove they can. Knowing you guys, you will be like, "Well they handled 10 hours just fine, lets push that up to 12. It is only an additional 2 hours".
Unless they are doing 4-10's or something like that, the work quality will drop. Sure, you have them working more, but at what cost? The code will turn out worse, the demeanor will drop, and in the end, you will completely regret the decision.
Take it from somebody who has lived through it, do not do it. You will regret it
The world is how you make it
That's manager-speak for "will you take a 36% pay decrease until we're profitable." Assuming the hourly rate *with overtime*, you're losing out on 22.5 hours of pay (15 hours @ time-and-a-half). Considering I value my 5-9 time more than my 9-5 time, it would be an even bigger pay cut in my opinion. If you believe the company will become profitable *and* compensate you accordingly, make the appropriate gamble.
Go read the book Slack by Tom Demarco. The first part of it explains quite clearly why this is a stupid idea, and what's required for an organization to work smarter instead of just harder. Some highlights:
I've definitely been-there and done-that with the mismanaged startup thing myself. The more time goes on, the more I see just how ineffective that team was. Sure, it felt macho to pull enormous hours and ship something anyway... but nowadays I could get a sizable multiple of work out of that same team and have them going home on time every day. Even IF you win the options lottery, the earnings per hour equation for startup overwork *sucks*. Note that "mismanaged" is the operative word here, not "startup". I've worked for a very well-run startup that didn't involve its employees in insane workloads.
The opportunity cost for the overwork lifestyle is immense as well. That you're even asking this question says that you still undervalue the value of your time greatly -- it's not just worth what some hiring manager or HR staffer tells you. It's your life, dammit! As a very wise co-worker once told me, "Work won't love you back."
"fuck" and "you"...
Did he also read the stuff Spolsky said about paying fantastic above-industry-standard salaries and having a fantastic office with excellent workspace and expensive, comfortable chairs, and catered staff lunches daily? Oh, and a lounge with a theater system and a ridiculously expensive coffee machine that costs more than the GDP of some countries?
How about the stuff Spolsky says about retaining old customers by squashing bugs and not just adding new features specifically so you can run around claiming you have a new shiny, even though it's useless and buggy?
Tell your boss to stop cherrypicking from what Spolsky says when he has no idea what his actual management philosophy is.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
Your coders will start to get repetitive stress injuries.
Reasonable questions:
How can I get the most development done for the least amount of money over the short term?
How can I get the most development done for the least amount of money over the medium term?
How can I get the most development done for the least amount of money over the long term?
But your boss has framed the question with constraints that may or may not produce the desired goal.
His constraints are:
-- all employees
-- 10-11 hour days
-- until the company is profitable
Why these constraints? That's where I would want to probe. He is making so many assumptions about yield from hours/employee and the idea that number-of-hours-worked ...
It would be interesting to know what he would think if you said you could produce more and better code by allowing certain people to work, say, 4 hours a day.
or people will start to ask questions.
Also, what the heck do you do when flu season starts?
You have got to ask yourself this: Would you want to work 12 hrs days without being compensated? Offer him a better idea: You'll work all the hrs he needs, but you'll contract for an hourly wage instead. Then once he's profitable, you can all go back to being salaried employees...
"Profitable" only applies to him.
Does he expect people to slave to enrich him and only him? What a piece of work.
Not games, but lots of assembly. If you work any extra hours, you get paid for it. If you wanted to work 100 hours instead of 40, you'd be getting 2.5 times your nominal salary. It's probably in Florida, but we have other offices too and might be opening more. doubleplusgoodalbert at gmail or reply below
Hell No,
you manager doesn't understand jack about productivity.
Anyway start looking for another job, that is if you value you personal life, physical and metal wellbeing
Who goes to work at a startup with less than a year under it's belt without any stake in the company???
Because you are spineless enough not to be able to answer this question for yourself and instead need to "Ask Slashdot", you will probably cave in to all demands made by management anyway. Stop pretending that you have a backbone, and get back to work.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You have no equity? If they haven't offered any to you in exchange for this, frankly, ridiculous effort you should say the following:
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
and yet you still complain?
yes i am joking. and i assume this whole article is troll bait. nobody on either side of this argument is that stupid.
The myth that everybody working 10-11 hour workdays get a project done faster or better is just that: a myth.
Every company has situations where - for a short period of time - everybody puts in those kinds of hours for an urgent situation. But those hours are paid for by the rebound; in which your employees spend some period of time being useless until they are properly rested.
I've been at companies (both in the USA and elsewhere) where the 10-11 hour workday was the expected norm. Invariably, the employees settle into a phase in which their efforts are concentrated on looking busy, presenting even the most minor milestones as great accomplishments, all the time spending the majority of the time scratching their balls. Schedules slip unbelievably, and what work is accomplished is invariably garbage.
Those companies that survive are the ones who notice that the guy who comes in the morning, and promptly leaves at 5pm, ends up getting a lot more done than those burning the midnight oil. These are the guys who, facing the disapproving glare of their manager, say "I did , , and today. It's all tested and debugged. I'm done for today. See you tomorrow morning." and walk out the door, knowing full well that nobody else even got done that day, much less and .
"What should I say to him when we talk about this again?" Don't talk to him again. Go directly to your lawyer -- tell him you are prepared to give him 100% of the proceeds. The lawyer knows very well how to turn this into a profit, because even asking the question your boss asked you, is illegal.
as long as you only work 4 days a week.
I was speaking with a colleague at another location about this very topic today. I believe that web development and design would be far more productive if ALL parties involved (Decision makers, Managers, Producers) worked a 4 hour day, here's how it would work: 8am - 12pm (Decision makers arrive, review previous days work, decide what they want done). 10am - 12pm (Managers arrive, speak with decision makers about what they want and define the day's goals) 12pm - 4pm (Producers arrive, get instruction from Managers and produce dilligently to accomplish the day's goals). If any one group needs to work beyond 4 hours...they can, and they're still ahead of the game. There would be 3 main challenges to overcome in order for this situation to be successful: 1. Priorities must be realistic. If a task takes more than one day to produce...break it down into smaller units which can fit into a single day's production. 2. High-caliber, hard-working, no-bullshit, uber-intelligent, ultra-talented, honest to the core, dedicated producers and managers. 3. Trust. Every person involved in the process MUST have faith, proven reliability and trust that the people they're working with can get the job done right the first time. The reason I brought this up and in this manner: Because there is a fundamental differing between the measurements of performance from all parties in the current scheme of life which makes owners, managers and even producers believe that more time equals better work.... THIS IS A FALSE CONCEPT!
In my experience yes. Programmers could work 10+ a day, but not for an indefinite period of time. To successfully crash a schedule, you need to provide strong goal, and reasonable milestones. As milestones are met, be prepared to give some kind of reward. The rewards don't have to cost a lot. Maybe a free day off for the whole team, or a happy hour on the company. In my opinion the most important part is to have defined end point. When the goal is met, the schedule goes back to normal.
I did this once, for a bit more than a month. Every day 12~15hours. It kills you. It really does. In my opinion, work like programming, cannot be done in that style every day. And what does that mean "until we are profitable". Once that starts you will never stop. Suddenly it is normal for you to work 10~11 hours a day.
Don't do it.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
He had no life outside of work and didn't mind putting in crazy hours, so he expected that from his employees. 10-12 hours a day, plus a day or two on the weekends. Everyone was burned out, exhausted, and looking for something better. I could see going to the boss and saying "Look, if you have some features in mind that need to get implemented ASAP then count me in for 30 days. But if we keep that up for more than a month I'm going to burn out, and that does neither of us any good." I'd ask for stock too. If the company fails, he's not out anything, if it takes off you've earned the right to share in its success.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
So 99% of the posts by people here are along the lines of 'look for a new job/tell him hell no/your brain goes to mush after 8 hours.' However, the wall street/finance industry guys everyone (especially slashdotter leftists) like to bash all work at a minimum 60-70 hour work weeks.
If you are comfortable with low-level hacking, maybe I could get you a job that doesn't suck. It's probably in Florida, though we have other offices too.
reply below or email doubleplusgoodalbert at gmail
Funny that no one asks if the OP likes the job or thinks that the product is valuable and worthwhile. If you really like what you do, then you can work the hours. The suggested pay is already equitable but it's nice to feel personally satisfied.
Better off outsourcing everyone's jobs to India. With an attitude like that in this global economy, well learn another trade dude. Your fucked either say yes or be at the line in the soup kitchen. I work 14 hours a day in New York, I have no life socially which is why I am posting on Slashdot. However I will retire at 50 at this rate and am living with fat pockets and a dark blue Cadillac and a $10k a month penthouse with $10k in savings every month as well. I rent escorts in my free time to keep the edge off and eat really well and exercise a lot. I also meditate. Your complaining about 10 hours man? Got to hustle, this is a startup dude! Become a librarian if you want it easy.
We're not talking about 10-11 hours punching buttons randomly or in a more or less monotonic order. You have to be able to THINK while working. Expecting someone to do this well for 10 hours straight is like asking someone to haul 100 pound cement sacks for 10 hours straight: It just doesn't work. Either you're wrecking the person if he tries to honestly do it, or you get someone who, out of self preservation, tries to slack where he can.
From my experience, there is not much difference in the work done between 6 and 10 hours of "official" work hours. The main difference between them is that I have to pay for 4 hours more in the latter model.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you are a certain type personality and find your work enjoyable, you will work all your waking hours. If your boss has to ask, the people being asked are either not that personality or the work is not enjoyable. (NOTE: working all your waking hours isn't really a good idea as it isn't sustainable and you are in danger of burning out.) If you are of that personality and your work is that enjoyable, be sure telecommunting options are available and work your own schedule. And get an ownership stake, you'll be even more motivated.
Tell him to stuff it. Corporate is trying to create Slave-Wage China v2.1 here in the states. Look at the numbers, top level income has been increasing for decades and is at record levels, average wages stagnated a good 30 years ago. Top corporations reported record earnings in 2008 yet cut wages 120 bil. If you work for a small-scale company, forget what I just said, but tell them to stuff it just on principle - if the wanker can't maintain profitability without abusing his workers he deserves to get tanked. Best of luck to you.
Your boss is a cunning psychopathic idiot.
Most likely he is asking other people this question as well. Talk about it.
He is looking for support for a situation where eventually he puts it to you all - and most will agree. The rest will feel the pressure.
Yes, it will destroy the company and/or individuals but this guy will not notice and/or not really care.
As well, maybe he is thinking about dumping some people.
Just get out as fast as you can and don't look back.
...would be to tell him to fuck off, but that sort of statement is usually not conducive to continued employment. Given what you've described, I think the only decent way he could get 10-11 hour days out of you folks would be to offer some type of incentives. Anything short of that should result in mutiny.
Joel also thinks that everyone should have a private workspace and should work relatively short days (don't remember the exact hours, but believe it was in the 8 - hour / day range) to avoid burnout and write better code. In fact, he believes it enough that I have heard that his company even prohibits after hours "work" on personal (programming) projects to help keep your mind fresh. And yes, all his programmers have offices.
when I was 20. I'd never programmed before, either, and had had only one college-level class in programming. So I ended up managing support (hiring, firing, scheduling, etc.), doing tier-2 support, writing software, and working to come up with ways to improve the company -- its offerings to customers, and internally. I was originally doing well with 40-50 hour weeks and paid overtime. Then the boss put me on salary so that he didn't have to pay me overtime. I had a small amount of stock options that vested slowly (which remained worthless even after I left), but no other compensation. The salary wasn't terrible for someone with my lack of experience. But, then he said I needed to work 50+ hours every week without additional compensation. That took its toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally. There were no perks. It was me and a desk almost every waking hour of the week, not including the work I was taking home. Relationships in and outside of work started to suffer. Looking back, I was treated like a pack mule, and for no apparent reason. I was scrambling to keep up with the workload all day, every day. And there was no clear ambition I'd been informed of. No overall "goal" I was working toward. No end in sight to the overworking. Had there been a clear goal... a plan to achieve it... an end... I think it would've been somewhat easier. But it still would've taken significantly more compensation to make it even close to worthwhile. I should've quit and continued my education when he starting his routine of overworking me. Having that as my first experience working in an office did not make my life easier, either. I think I was actually so busy I never had time to fully consider the toll it was taking on me (though I certainly was aware of it), and whether or not it was really worth it.
My point is, tread carefully. I don't think there's an easy answer here, and no matter what happens, each of you will need to decide whether or not the kind of change the boss is offering is really the right change for you at the present time.
Good luck. Hope your boss is easier to negotiate with than mine was.
expletives welcomed
1) I believe Joel has written many other essays about software development. Perhaps he'd be willing to take thirty seconds to send an appropriately pithy e-mail to your boss.
2) "Until you're profitable"
a) if he means "for two weeks", that might be marginally arguable. I bet he doesn't.
b) profitability is a management function, not a programer function. It involves having an adequate plan. This plan is implemented by sales and marketing, not by software engineering. Your management should replace themselves with someone competent.
"Five hours is safe for mental labor." - Sir Walter Scott (paraphrased)
Sir Walter felt that mental labor could be dangerous, yet insidious. Unlike physical labor, where excessive work brings obvious physical signs; mental labor can bring with it serious complications that are not quantifiable until it is too late. He concluded that it was safe to work up to five hours a day without fear of consequences. More than that was risky.
While there might be some disagreement about the amount of work that is safe per day, Sir Walter did have a point. Pushing people to work too much has a clear impact on not only their health, but also on their results. They might actually get less done over the long run; or they could get more done, but with more problems to deal with later. Like the tendency to try to hurry a project by adding more people (The Mythical Man-Month), the push to get people to work longer hours is likely to do more harm than good.
Sometimes, the only realistic option is to cancel or postpone features. Before you do that, try cutting any unnecessary meetings, and if possible, move any administrative tasks from your developers to someone else. Try to make the best of the hours you are working, rather than adding more hours that are inefficient.
<flamebait>
Also, Joel Spolsky is a complete moron and should never be used as an example of anything.
</flamebait>
Tell him not till they atleast offer you all equity in the company. Even then most people know the real value and failure rate of startups. I tell me people not to work at startups they don't really believe in.
...one person in this group who is chronically underestimated is me.
Ask current and potential customers what would they value in a fix or enhancement. Use that info to guide prioritization rather than just throwing features in that customers may or may not value.
Consider that productivity may drop with 10 hour days on a consistent basis. I found the best days measured by "programmer production" were the days I asked or OKed my guys to stay home and work from there...sometimes days at a time. Sometimes they even gathered in someone's basement and worked together. By freeing them from the interrupting office BS and allowing them to take breaks at their own pace (not that I ever worried about those) their motivation to produce something great was what drove them rather than some pointy-headed managers dictate. By trusting them, they learn to trust you.
I kid you not. a local bay area company was upfront and open with me that they require all employees (software and hardware) to work mandatory saturdays (their phrase) for at least the next year, maybe 18mos.
nope, not a sprint but really a long distance run.
I simply told them this was burn-out city and unreasonable. I had an offer but had to say no to them. (I won't mention their name but in the last year, they did make slashdot as a story on their own tech, fwiw).
speaking with one employee, during the interview, gave me the strong impression that they hated this policy and it was wearning them all down.
I had to say no. I'm too old for this shit.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I don't care enough to read through and make sure I'm not repeating what's already been done to death. I've worked for a few small companies, and seen some things work and some things fail dismally.
One thing I have definitely seen is that the typical employee has motivation for about 20-30 real, productive work hours per week. Anyone who puts in a real, near-peak 40 hours is a superstar, and I'll do anything to hang onto those people. Regardless of how much someone shines during an interview, it's very hard to judge this, and I find most new hires tend towards about 20 hours.
The absolute worst way to increase this is to just ask them to do it. Especially when they already aren't being particularly productive during part of their week. Their productivity will sit at about the same level. Their 'sitting at their desk pretending to work' time will increase. They'll get home later, have less leisure time, and their productive hours will start to creep down.
What I have seen work is incentive-based volunteering. I worked for one company for a while where I tended to work a few extra hours during the week (I probably averaged 10-hour days, when I only needed 8), and I felt more productive there than anywhere else I've worked. My salary was actually a little below what I could have gotten elsewhere, but the team culture was amazing. 4pm on Friday was officially Beer (/ non-alcoholic alternative) O'clock. There were plates of fruits and pastries in the kitchen every morning. There was an amazing coffee shop across the road, and we had an account there and were encouraged to have small-group meetings there. The boss put on a barbecue once every couple of weeks on the weekend, and he did all the cooking (for 15+ people) himself, and the food was VERY good (like large, high-grade steaks, expensive and well-prepared fish, oysters, and so on). If it weren't for that unfortunate matter involving the FBI, our Federal Police (we're outside the US), and MasterCard investigators, I'd still be happily pulling 10+ hour days there. All of that effort cost MUCH less than paying us for the extra time we put in, and given the salaries were a touch below average, we probably cost less overall than a typical software team who would be less happy, less productive, working 8 hours a day and not really pulling their weight. Another place where I worked took everyone out water- and jet-skiing once a month (the boss owned several boats and jet-skis).
If the boss really won't look at paying you more or giving you stock (and, from what I've seen, there are lots of people who don't seem to be more motivated by more money), he should look at doing something genuine to improve his employees' lives.
Before you respond, ask yourself: Are you and your co-workers truly using your time optimally today? What does that mean? Well: little to no foozball, recreational web browsing, personal phone calls, facebooking, twitter, phone calls, long lunches, late breakfasts, early dinners, personal business, etc.
I find it takes me a lot of self control to limit myself from these things, but when I do, I find myself giving it my all. I also find there's no way to give it my all more than about 6 hours a day, day after day. It's like a professional athlete: recovery is very very important. If you are constantly working without a recovery, you will burn out.
In my 6 hour days, I end up getting about 2 hours of mandatory recovery in there, and even then, it's structured recovery time. I don't hang out with my co-workers or my "boss" - I actually get the hell out of there and talk to sales, marketing, or biz-dev. Otherwise the conversations always degrade into the problem at hand and I lack a fresh perspective.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. But sometimes you have to sprint. If you have a product launch in 5 days and it's pivotal for the company, then you better sprint for at least the next 3 days - pulling longer days. After that, you'll need a proportional recovery. To do otherwise is unsustainable.
That last bit is what has me most concerned about your question - does your manager realize it's a marathon, and not a sprint? He can't just run the engine harder and expect it to perform. Otherwise, good luck in your job search.
I have my own company, that is the norm for me if not lower than what I put in, but I own the company - I don't expect that from the others.
I worked at a couple of different start-ups beginning around the Y2K scare. Had lots of stock options. Never saw a penny in additional income. Lost about $1,500 in exercised options in one place I worked that never made it to being a publicly traded company.
It's not unreasonable to put in 45 hour weeks when you work in software. You can even expect some 50+ hour weeks. The ONLY reason you should work these kinds of hours is some sort of realistic expectation that you will somehow be compensated for the additional hours. If you work in a big, established company, that could mean promotions or, at least, raises. If you work in a start-up, some sort of equity is appropriate. If the equity isn't there or there isn't a realistic business plan to make it happen, start looking and then get out. Fast.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Point boss to this article (also by Joel Spolsky, since your boss will listen to him):
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/how-hard-could-it-be-five-easy-ways-to-fail.html?partner=fogcreek
Particularly mistake #5: Work till midnight.
Summary: Working long weeks is a bad idea.
or rather, it works for the VC's and execs. even the first line mgrs make no real money on 'stocks'.
its a con. take it from me (50 yr old, bay area engineer who worked for a lot of the 'darlings' in the area, a who's who list). I never made any real money on 'equity' and my peers didn't either.
I HAVE seen many of my peers get walked out JUST before they were going to vest. I've seen other evil shit, too. short answer: you can't trust the company to even make good on any stock offers they make. things have a way of 'changing' when you are about to vest. happens a LOT more than people want to talk about.
work for cash/money. paychecks. you can write checks on that. you can't write checks on 'promises of stocks'. bullshit - don't fall for it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
isnt this what happens to every startup? bunch of fresh-faced whiz-kids, in love with the art of computer programming becoming totally fucking sick of the profession after working sweatshop hours for 4 months while the head's brother-in-law who gets a position in marketing and "team leadership" says you all have to "push the paradigm?"
Seems like a job hunt is a good idea if the company is by your boss's own words "not profitable"
I worked for a small upstart software company where they decided to mandate that everyone work half day Saturdays. Over time most of the best developers left, including myself. I honestly don't know how well they are doing now, I'm not sure why companies sometimes feel compelled to drive away anyone who has the skills to get a job elsewhere.
I've worked in shops where the corporate mindset was, literally, don't go home, there's nothing for you at home, please stay overnight and get this done... etc etc ad nauseam. My salary, based on foolish idiocy about my own worth, seemed nice enough for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, but...
All programmer-analysts were programmers, and all programmers were coders, with the clear understanding that any schmuck off the streets (or fresh out of college) can "code."
I quit. Revenge came in a few weeks, as that company quickly rawhided itself to death. They sold out to a Big Name (not M$) who sold it to a dying brand who tore it to pieces and sold off the nearly worthless assets. Chairs and old computers and framed office decoration subscriptions went for a song.
Real company assets have brains and go home at night. Must he hell on control freaks.
These days, of course, coder is more a badge of honor than it was, because the ability to use Microsoft software somehow morphed from using to "programming."
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
I have worked for two companies that went down the same road. One started issuing all sorts of stock options, then they did a reverse 700:1 split and the new shares ended up going for about $3 each (originally they were as high as $38 a share before the split. At one time, during the.com boom it would have been around $2.24 million dollars in stock. After the reverse split the options were down to a total value of $257. They did re-issue new stock options at the revalued price, it was just an insult.
For seven years I worked the 50-60 hour weeks. Ended up with ulcers, heart problems, insomnia and some stress related disorders and on a laundry list of meds (I still take 12 prescriptions a day, eight years after I was finally laid off).
Seeing the doctor at the time I was taken aback when she said "just quit, no job is worth your life". It all made sense at the time, put in a few more years, exercise my options on a few million dollars and retire by age 40.
The second company just wanted more billable hours (consultant) as they could bill on the hours you put against a project. They just one day, unilaterally decided that our billable targets were set to 50 hours/week. Even working a 60 hour week you still lose hours when doing emails, phone calls, company motivational presentations and the obligatory after hour "social" get-togethers.
I tell ya, unless it is time with someone you really are in love with, after 50 hours a week the last thing you want to be doing is hanging out with the folks you work with.
Usually the folks who make these sorts of proclamations on "50 hour work weeks" have already been through a few divorces (because their job was way more of a priority than their families) and would not know what to do with their time if they were not at work. At this last company I was working a really long day, it was around 8 pm when I swung by the owners office to say good night to find him sitting there drinking Jack Daniels from a paper cup in his office. That is the type of life they wanted us to live. Only one priority in the world, work your ass off to make money for them. Not giving a damn about what your decisions mean to other people (probably why his wife dumped his ass too) and making all sorts of money so at your death you can have a viking funeral, burning on piles of $1 bills.
Tisha Hayes
Its all about market forces. Supply and demand. And you are the commodity.
He wants to pay less for you. You want him to pay more. He wants you to increase supply. What is the level of demand for your skills?
If you have skills that are in high demand, you can ask for more money, and you can restrict your supply (eg work less hours). If you have skills that are a-dime-a-dozen, then you have little power in this situation.
Arrogant IT nobs will tell you to quit without even asking for your market-situation. You need to consider your situation carefully. And start ignoring the teenagers who think you have the god-given right to be an executive 12 months into the job.
You may be right to leave and command a higher wage elsewhere. You might need to work some longer hours to build your skills/experience.
Think carefully. The grass is not always greener on the other side.
EA got in trouble for trying that a while back.
If you pay people on salary you are paying for a job done and cannot mandate a set of hours.
they may want to switch to an hourly rate to avoid running afoul of the law on this one.
ps: assuming you are in the US that is.
We typically pull 12-14 average 5-6 days a week in salary positions. The company however pays us very well and you had better bet that if I
want a "strawberry pop-tart" at any given moment someone is going to be tasked with driving across town to the grocery store to get it for me. I have my
every need attended to so I have no problem going above and beyond.
Got Code?
Welcome, Comrades! Welcome to the Glorious Union of Soviet Corporatist Republics!
Get your boss a copy of: http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/
Basically... oh I don't even have a simple way of breaking this down...
Is there really evidence that the problem getting customers is lack of features? All the features in the world won't help if the product isn't something people want, or it's not being marketed effectively.
Can the developers prioritize features over, say, usability or stability, if they're just looking for a box to tick (ladies and gentlemen, I give you Microsoft)?
If developers have to work 50+ hour weeks on a long term basis, they will screw up your code base. You will have to spend a lot of time later, un-screwing it. Expect to at least match every hour over a 40 hour week, in time to undo the damage. Is getting features at the cost of massive technical debt, going to help?
You will be saying that you are comfortable working 10-11 hours for some indefinite period, perhaps because you like the job so much or you are not confident of finding work elsewhere, or maybe you just don't care so much. Unlike so many other posters, I don't think that's necessarily silly; 10-11 hours is not a terrible load. Many, many, developers consider this (assuming it's no weekends and no on -call) a relatively light and standard schedule and their life goes on happily. It's hardly life destroying. Yes, some people _other_ people have 40hr jobs, so what? Yet other people work 80 hours in two jobs at minimum wage. Don't define what is acceptable versus what is an insult relative to some rather
arbitrary standard.
The truth is: In many pre-profit (or at least, pre-revenue) startup, the ideas that 5x11 is at all inappropriate would be met by all concerned, including engineers, with utter disbelief.
However, even if you are OK with the schedule, think about what "until the company is profitable means". Who defines this? More importantly, are you confident that management (whoever it is then) will think this way ... after all, the workforce has been doing things such and such a way for a long time by then, and now they are asked to expand the development staff by 10-20% because of some long-ago vague promise? And maybe the company is moving out of the development phase; it's profitable and sales/marketing/support now takes precedence - if some people "insist" on lowering their hours, well, we needed to lay off some people anyway, and so...
In short, while I don't think 10-11 hours should scare you, don't believe it's not permanent. Now if it were 70 hour weeks+, 1 full weekend day or more, etc: that's temporary since it's not efficiently sustainable. But 10-11 hours? That's a culture, a fairly standard one, and once established it probably won't revert.
If you have any market power, get equity. The spoils go to those who are working or owning later in the game. Too many developers work too hard (even with equity) early in a company's life. When the money flows it, it flows to those
who have bargaining power _at that time_ - and that usually does not include engineer who gave their all earlier on but are replaceable later, unless they have contractual or ownership protection. (Even then, you are probably screwed).
When mgmt starts asking stupid things like this. They are grasping at straws and going under.
As stated above. Work on you job hunt for 10-11 hrs a day.
the school I got my BA from. The president thought it was reasonable that students study 10+ hours a day. (I don't remember how many hours he thought we should study on weekends. Before anybody asks, yes this was a major US school and not some for profit scam place.) Yes, everyday for years. I didn't actually study that much but then again the place literally made me mentally ill. (I'm ok now but it took years after I graduated before I was anything close to normal. That was not a good part of my life)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I am a manager. There are times where long days are necessary... recently I put in several 70 hours weeks because of a deadline and a developer leaving without notice. But the norm I encourage is low 40's most of the time. I want my folks to be focused and able to think. The reality is that it is difficult to maintain the intense focus you need for quality developing for more than 8 hours a day. Yeah, your body can be in a chair longer... but if it persists to long without incredibly strong motivation, you actually get negative returns.
Now, the other thing I insist on... if you are at work, you are there to work. In my career I've seen too many people "putting in long hours" to have most of it spent goofing around and gabbing with coworkers. I don't want your whole life invested in the job, but I want you invested in the job while you are there.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
He could lay off 1/2 of the programming staff. Warm bodies are probably his #1 expense, ya know?
If the core product sucks, chances are "new features" won't mean too much. Maybe it's time for him to reevaluate the market for his products (and for you to reevaluate your future there).
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Joel also runs Fog Creek Software. Tell your boss you want this sort of environment http://www.fogcreek.com/about.html since Joel recommends it.
10-11 hour days can be done. I aim for 65 hours a week. They can't be done without extenuating circumstances though when you can just walk on over to the next shop and get the same pay for a standard 8 hour day. Update your resume. It might work out but I'd bet against.
-CZ
Tell him to go for it. He'll love you for the support, and maybe even give you a promotion out of it. Truth is, as a breed we software engineers are really - really dumb when it comes to business. All he has to do is set up a competitive environment where people get afraid to leave before the people next to them - next thing you know everyone will be working long days and even weekends. Everyone will swallow the kool-aid, and thank him for it at the end of the day. Feed them cheap shit - software engineers are also notoriously cheap - give them takeout from Chili's or order a few pizzas; the idea of free food is too good to pass up and they will feel obligated to stay not only for dinner, but then for a while after dinner. Meanwhile, the company will likely never be 'profitable' - because most startup companies don't really give a shit about profitablility, they just exist as a place for execs and sales guys to make a bunch of money while the dorks sort out the ones and zeroes over in the small cubes.
You should say to your boss something like "'Say Hello to my little Friend!!!" RA TA TA TA TA!!
HA, I have been working 12 hour days consistently for years. I feel guilty if I go home before dark or get to work after daybreak. YES it sucks, yes I am a shareholder, and yes I hope we make it big. But honestly people 12 hours a day isn't that bad and you know what? You had better get used to it. The chinese and indians are quickly coming up to speed and we live in a global economy. Programming is the first of the engineering fields to be outsourced and I assure you that you won't find any chinese and indian programmers bitching about having to work hard for 1/10th the money that we all make. Sorry to burst the "how dare he ask me to work more than 8 hours a day" bubble, but seriously how long do you think you can sit on a high horse fat and happy. It's amazing what you can accomplish once you get past preconceived notions of what is a reasonable workday, though, maybe not everyone around here has the cajones to keep their brains focused for more than a few hours a day unless it is on WoW.
You program 11-11 hours a day and you still have time for slashdot.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Just tell your boss to prostitute himself. Just until the company is profitable...
I would have told him to "get f*cked" as soon as he said it - the second he suggested it, in those exact words. I worked a large aerospace company, you've flown on their planes, where they decided everyone had to work 12 hour days for 10 weeks. I told them to get f*cked and continued my 40 hour weeks. I was called to the project managers office where he, I, and the technical lead 'chatted' for about an hour. At the end of me enumerating all the ways that I had told them over the previous year how to not f*ck up management of the project and how to get things back on track they agreed that I was right. Fortunately I didn't have a mortgage or a family - those who did got burnt out and the company ended up sending their wives on vacations as a bit of compensation. But my point is, nip those ideas in the bud or you'll just get screwed over from now until hell freezes over.
55555
I don't think it's that simple, even ignoring the difficulty of finding another job. I've been a software engineer for 10 years, and I've had to pull a few stretches of 55-60 hour weeks. Most engineers I know have done it; we don't like those periods but most of us really like our jobs overall.
In the OP's situation, I'd ask the boss to prove that it's reasonable to expect the company to become profitable under the proposed plan. Ask about dates, revenue, and customer commitments or at least verifiable customer interest. Make sure the boss considers the diminishing returns of working extra hours, and the need to recharge after a burst of extra hours. Working more hours can boost productivity for a while (depending on what you do), but not indefinitely. Personally, I can do 60 hour weeks for about a month before I become so sluggish and dumb that there's no point. Then I need a 4-5 day weekend and a return to 40 weeks for a while -- like 2 years. Cash helps too.
If the boss's plan is likely to work, I'd go for it. If boss won't do that, or tries and fails to be persuasive, start looking for a new job. The company is probably going to fail anyway.
If stock as payment comes up, don't accept it without doing your own research into the value of it. Startups are notoriously hard to price, and the manager may (honestly or not) be inclined to overestimate it.
set a group of bounties on a big whiteboard, similar to achievements in games, but more along the lines of "first person to finish their portion of project x" or whatever goals you have, and let them know that they can work late if they choose, but are in no way obligated.
you would be stunned at how much more a competitive group gets done in 8 hrs compared to a group slogging out for 12, and the bounties cost significantly less than paying everyone overtime, just enough to be nice and make them compete.
The company doesn't deserve to live, so don't be helpful. Working extra hours can be compensated for by stretching the work to fill the time instead of doing more work.
There is no moral duty to stupid people. Fuck 'em.
Look for another gig and bail, or ride to the crash and collect unemployment if you don't have high overhead.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I like how the OP mentions Joel Spolsky when he's written several articles talking about just this situation and how it never works.
It must be nice to be a manager, picking and choosing the kinds of information you choose to retain.
If you were all on polyphasic sleeping schedules (like the Everyman or Uberman), it would make this more feasible. But with monophasic sleeping you're just asking for a whole host of problems I'm sure everybody else has already pointed out.
At every technology company I'm aware of, 55 hour weeks are normal. Someone who works 40 hours isn't going anywhere professionally.
Not my experience at all. I've been a software engineer for 10 years. 40-45 hour weeks are the norm for me, and I make sure my boss knows it. I'm 100% satisfied with my pay, job security, and opportunities.
I've done 50+ hour weeks maybe 30 times in my career. Twice I went a month without a day off, which sucked until I got my bonus check.
Say Nothing.
Don't get involved in the conversation if the manager asks, assume no interest at all.
Be one of the crowd.
Buy a copy of 'Death March' and put it on the manager's desk. - http://www.amazon.com/Death-March-2nd-Edward-Yourdon/dp/013143635X
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Just because you're salaried, it doesn't mean that your employer can force you to work move than 40 hours a week without compensation. In fact, even if you are salaried most of the time you are eligible for overtime pay. Here's a link to the relevant laws in California - your mileage may vary, so do a search for the laws applicable to your state.
http://www.gotovertime.com/facts.html
Seriously the stock options are pie in the sky.
Scientology is not all its cracked up to be.. even though he can quote it biblically.
And remember he wrote the book on Free Brain Eronic delusions.
run, run very fast, change your phone number, dispose of all your email accounts.
Eventually the IRS will chain the doors shut and you wont get crap.
Just speaking from experience.
He will bleed every last drop from your shrunken pale white blistered veins and not even think twice to close it down and open it up under a new name when it all gos up in smoke.
run. do yourself a favor just don't go back, nothing in it for you.
The extra hours is just to keep you side tracked long enough, in the end, nothing will come of the company.
Work 8H a day.. but for free until the company is profitable!
I used to work as a Field Service Computer Technician for a Large Corporation. We had Mandatory unpaid overtime and a 60-80 hour week was the norm. I was 23 when I started that job and when I left at 27 I was a dead man. High Blood Pressure, Borderline Diabetes, High Cholesterol. My Doctor had me on a stack of drugs just to keep me going and warned me if I kept this up I'd be dead in 5-10 years. I worked and worked and one day my boss pulled me aside and said "you can't take that vacation! You are too important to your Territory. I was shocked. He told me I'd lose my job if I took the Vacation. Long Story short I took my vacation. I posted my Resume and I got out of there. I work for a new company where we work 35 hour weeks. get paid lots more money and I sit at a Desk most of the day. Here's the best part. Of all the medication I was on about 7 prescriptions I now only take 1. With all the Free time I was able to get Married and have a good life. I now know about the Dangers involved in pulling 60-80 hour weeks. Don't be stupid. No jobs worth the bull shit.
Tell your boss that the only way that the employees would find this to be a fair request would be for stock options or even outright grants to be offered in exchange for the excessive number of hours worked each week. If employees feel that they will be rewarded for extra effort, they will be willing to put the extra effort in, but without extra pay in SOME form, forcing employees to work more than 40 hours a week is just asking for EVERYONE to leave.
Especially early in the days of my game development career, "crunch time" often came with MUCH longer than 10-hour days, often with no days off for weeks. I can't say we were always more productive toward the end of the day, but we (mostly) all managed and we knew plenty of others in the same boat. Still, there are always other jobs with better hours, and not getting burned out early in your career is a good idea too.
Why does your boss want to emulate Joel Spolsky. Because he read the guys book and like it? Maybe your boss needs to look at Fog Creek Software and realize their software is just as crappy as most other software. Joel makes most his money from the books. He doesn't produce any higher quality software or have a better profit margin than anyone else. It's just like all those other get-rich-quick guys are making their money by selling books.
1) Is the company's problem a cash flow problem or an income problem? If the former you might like to offer to work for holidays. I recently worked unpaid for one week in two for two months. The company saved half my wages in that period, and I added 4 weeks leave to my annual total. However if it's an income problem - bail unless you believe what sales are saying about their pipeline (and then Santa will help you out).
2) From where are the new features coming? If they're out of your boss's grey matter, then don't count on them creating new clients. Sorry but that's just a fact of life.
3) For how long a period does he expect the extra effort? And what is he offering for the extra? There is a limit to how long you can work at high loads, and it has to come with a reward (but the reward does not have to be now - which is probably his major concern).
My $0.02 worth
If your company is a year in and thinking about radical changes like this, get the hell out while you can!
A 10-11 hour day should pay at least a 50% premium, probably 100%. If he's not going to pay you extra for extra work, why should you bother.
Like Mr. Paycheck said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPrSVkTRb24
One could accept IOUs from the boss, after he also endorses them with his own holdings. And the overtime salary should be at an overtime rate. I would not do it as I have children to enjoy, and a wife who did not marry a machine. But, if the overtime was 1 day a week, and perhaps every other Saturday, I might consider it.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Tell him that Joel Spolsky also recommends 40 hour working weeks.
You've got a great idea to increase company profitability in the short term and decrease their reliance on labor in the long term. The man's ears will perk up in a Pavlovian response common to all managers. When the drool is dripping from the edge of his mouth and he's practically raising his desk with a financial woodie and he breathlessly asks you how ... tell him:
Ask the programmers to work longer hours with no extra compensation or stock.
Seriously, count up your savings and hand the guy your socially-acceptable-minimum-advance-notice of resignation.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
But unless there's a reward for those developers at the end of that tunnel, they should expect people to start jumping ship when the job market improves. Furthermore, developers who are being pressured to put in overtime to implement new features are not going to create the cleanest (or best documented) code; so when those developers leave, the company is going to have a maintenance mess on their hands.
Nuff said.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I spent 2 years in a start-up where I worked 60-100 hrs/week (mostly 80's). During that time, I got married and had a child. Then when the start-up collapsed, I had to take another job that was much lower, but had some interesting aspects. I was back to working 60-80 hrs per week. During that time, I started a divorce (my ex quit her lithium and was a f'ing loon). Then my ex renegged on the agreement where I gave her everything, and took a 1 year marriage into a 4.5 year divorce and destroying my career.
After those hours, I lost my love of coding and had nothing to show for it.
So, what is my point? Do the work IFF you really love the work and are super committed in life. But above all else, do not put this above everything else. It is possible that those hours combined with other commitments will end up causing you to hate what you enjoy/love to do.
Windbourne(moderating).
A reason not to settle for salary but per hour as you make more as many salaried employees later find out. Salary = I will work as many hours as you like for no additional pay.
This recipe is used by some people that I work with. Take Ritalin or follow this: - Avoid caffeine and sweet drinks. - Avoid: milk, sugar, meat, carbs and alcohol, caffeine, lettuce, any food that might have yeast in it. - 10 minutes of cardio workout after work - Sleep in the coldest temp you can without waking up in the middle of the night - Take a cold shower in the middle of the shift. (if possible)
If you manage to get your manager to agree to some sort of compensation (stock sounds like the best for your specific situation), make sure you get it on paper (or in the case of stock, up front). There are good managers who do live up to their word, but good managers will also understand that the bad managers force you to request some sort of backing to his word.
It isn't uncommon for people to work longer hours at a startup, but there is always an incentive. In some cases, it is being a part of something you see as potentially grand. In other cases, it is a chance to become independent from other companies. In other cases, it is an interest in getting the company to do well so their stock prices will increase. If you boss wants his people to work longer work days, then he has no choice but to provide them some incentive, or all the bad things others have highlighted will start happening. You can point to things like the EA Spouse and foundation of Activision by former Atari employees as reasons why he needs to provide some modicum of incentive.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
It's a startup and none of the employees has equity? Forget it. Leave.
Don't stick around for 10+ hour days unless you're having fun for the entire 10 hours. I worked at a start-up for 9 months at 14 hours a day at work, then another 2 hours each night updating status, bug reports, and schedules.
Take it from me. Your stress level climbs. Your relationship suffers. Your health suffers. Job satisfaction the day I quit, zero.
I found a better job that pays slightly less than the start-up for base. But my stock price is already up so high I might be $20k ahead of what I used to make.
The start-up still hasn't IPO'd. It opted out paying any first year anniversary bonus to the "old timers" (read the fine print). And all vacation time is canceled, nobody accrues PTO anymore, and people were just given a check for the PTO they have earned (rather than time off).
How many hours do I work at my new company? Sometimes 10-12 a day to meet a specific deadline, but even when I work those hours I come home feeling pretty upbeat. Maybe I'm still in the honeymoon period but it's been almost a year so I don't think so.
Here's some food for thought. Nobody ever got rich working themselves to death for a start-up they don't own.
Solution: Arrive a few minutes before you boss arrives and leave a couple of minutes after your boss leaves. Your 10-11 hour work week problem will be solved!
Asking someone to work overtime is almost the same as asking to barrow money. It's actually worse, because not only are you taking that potential income; you are also screwing up their personal time/schedule. I'm not a high-paid exec or anything; but I figure if my boss asks me to come in for eight hours on a Saturday - that is, literally, the CEO asking me to bum $320 or so.
If my CEO asked me to donate $320 to the company, most people would think that CEO insane. But, with time? People seem to put up with it.
Anyway, it's easy to be an internet tough guy; but I'm young and don't have children/responsibilities and, I'm pretty cheap. So it's not hard for me to draw a line in the sand. I wish more people would do it. Still, I'm very direct about it - when I'm asked to work OT, I will do it; but I will take an equal amount of time off that following week. Maybe someday some boss of mine will call me on it and I'll either have to do what they say or quit. So far, no problems. Oddly enough, it's the same e-mail I write when I'm running late or have to leave or some reason.
"Hey $Boss - I'm running a bit late today, probably won't be in until this afternoon. Will make up the time next week"
When I work OT, it's typically something like
"Hey $Boss - Coming in this weekend on Saturday to work on the XYZ needed for Monday. Will make up the time next week".
As a salaried IT employee of nearly a decade, I have many times considered the bullshit to compensation ratio, and it directly applies to this question. With the bullshit:compensation ratio, each individual is impacted differently. Everybody has a different threshold of bullshit that they will find acceptable. If you are adequately compensated, you may be willing to put up with more bullshit (extra hours in this case) and will be happy with your continued employment. If the bullshit outweighs the compensation, you will be unhappy, and the stresses created will drive you or those around you to make a change. That change could be requesting higher compensation or benefits to level off the bs:comp ratio, or could be initiating your next job hunt.
The bullshit applies to those around you as well. More bullshit could mean your friends see less of you, so you may lose out on those friendships or see them suffer. Or your partner or spouse may have a different level of accepted bullshit than you, and may leave you. Or your children may see less of you and think less of you as a parent (combined with your spouse leaving you, may find an acceptable replacement step-parent). I don't speak from experience on these possibilities, but I've seen them happen.
The solution is to not let the bullshit outweigh the compensation. Seek acceptable compensation to counter the bullshit, at your current employer or at your next one. But whatever you do, don't let the bullshit outweigh the compensation. When that happens, and you accept it, you are lost and must find your way back. It's easier to not get lost in the first place.
Problem solved!
You might be able to get 10% more raw code out of people temporarily at the cost of having them burn out 100% in a year. Not a big gain, and it’s a bit like eating your seed corn. Of course, when you overwork people, debugging time doubles and a late project becomes later. Splendid karma.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html
"My current boss asked me what I thought of asking all employees to work 10-11 hour days until the company is profitable."
It is possible to suddenly ask for 10-11 hours, but expect to pay employees an increased amount for adding additional hours to the conditions of employment, which is a wage reduction otherwise, if you are forcing additional hours on them without repayment. Since they are only salaried, the pay is their only compensation, and the thing compensated for is the amount of work they do and the number of hours spent working. This is basically the same as asking employees to agree to take a pay cut, for the sole benefit of providing the owner(s) with more money. Except it is even worse, because working 10-11 hours a day implies reduction in family time, increased stress, sleep deprivation, possibly resulting in more illnesses/health problems, reduced amount of time for people to get things done that they need to get done in their own lives --- things that are required for them to be well-maintained individuals who can continue to do effective work.
Just because people are working more hours does not mean they get more useful work done. And there may be more bugs or flaws in their work that the work conditions cause. People who are sleep deprived or under more stress/pressure are more likely to make mistakes, and if forced to do so, they really won't be responsible for those mistakes; yes, management can be responsible for increased number of bugs in code, both through dictating conditions of employment, and/or demanding too many features at too quick a dev pace.
Think about it. More man hours for fewer dollars. Assuming just as much gets done during the additional hours (a very shaky assumption), a clear win for the company (at the workers' expense), at least in theory. After such a move, the only reason for workers to stay would be they can't get a deal sufficiently comparable to what they had before elsewhere, or they are so loyal that they will not. After all, they could switch employers, and the new employer could do something similar as well, so for an employee, there are measures of risks involved; however, if going from 8hour days to 11 hour days, that's essentially a 35% increase in work duration, AKA a 35% cut in average pay per hour worked. That is probably a large enough disparity to eventually tip the scales for a fair number of people.
How willing would you be to switch employers if someone offered you slightly better pay to work 29 hours a week, instead of 40?
Employee morale will also suffer, and probably loyalty as well, unless you can do something to promise employees their extra hours commitments will be worth it to them.
Otherwise.. to improve profitability of the company -- why would they want to? Employees are paid to do their job, which requires skills that have a market value. To survive all companies must be profitable eventually, but workers' skills are transferrable, and without skin in the game, employees are really just mercenaries with little major to gain (or lose) in the long run based on profitability... the best mercenaries are liable to find another army to join.
Employees, especially engineers are usually not paid directly to work on company profitability, except certain employees who are managers paid to allocate resources.
So overall company "profitability" is a very poor measure of most employees' performance.
If the employer does not make recompensation or flexibility obvious for such a demand, expect the employees with the best resumes (the ones that can most easily find work elsewhere quickly) to leave when the boss suddenly demands more hours; possibly without the courtesy of advance notice, if the employer is changing the condition of employment by immediately adding many hours they have to work without additional pay, they have a right to do so, as their former boss dishonoring their conditions of employment, and th
10-11 hour days? No problem.
Just have 'em write options for 1/10th% of the company per person with an exercise strike cost of about %5,000 to $6,000. And serve nutritious munchies (not salt-crunchies and pop) all day and a dinner buffet on the company dime every evening - with no OBLIGATION to stay after.
Then they're in startup mode and most of the engineers will voluntarily stay for an extra 2 to 4 hours per day.
(The food is especially cheap compared to hiring enough extra employees to work the extra hours, plus the still more extra hours and extra management needed for the communication inefficiency with a bigger work force.)
But expect 'em to work that much time on a startup without options? I laugh. You can get away with it in an established company with an exceptional benefits package. But the people who would stay at a startup for that long without a cut of the pie are the ones who couldn't get a position with a startup that would cut them in.
Pay the workers or kiss 'em goodbye.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If there is an specific goal and people is motivated they will cope with it for a short time but the correct answer is NO, it is not the right thing to do. I mean you can do the favor for a couple of weeks if it is for a deadline but working like crazy ... and until the company is profitable... by the way, when and how it is profitable because maybe profitable means to work 11 hours a day for an entire year.
If profitable means 1 month of 11/24 hs work with no pay, ok but there must be something in return at the end, written.
http://www.quasarcr.com/
I'd have no problem if - There was a committment of some sort of additional benefit once the company is profitable - The 10 hours were something I could control. In other words, I'd like to come in and start at 7, eat at my desk and leave at 5 or 6. This actually would beat my last gig, which was 15 hours a day which they controlled...in other words 10PM conference calls on Sunday nights, etc. Even that wouldn't have been huge - but that was considered baseline. Left that company, and the new gig pays significantly better.
Lie. Tell him it's a wonderful idea. Wait for everyone else to quit. Make sure you fake working from home 7-11 so it's theoretically possible they think you're actually working from home. Dazzle them with technical explanations as to why implementing the features are taking so much effort. You'll be last man standing, still being paid, but not working hard.
Then ask for a raise.
He's asking for permission to fuck you.
Fuck him.
Then they really need to get a load of new programmers in and kick out the people who are steering things.
A few, well targeted new features that can be expanded on, once you have customers for them willing to pay is a sensible idea.
Having a code base that solid and a product so slick you get new customers when your existing ones say how fucking excellent you are will get you much further, and also should make adding those features as painless as possible (especially in the future once you have a few more customers, and your spending all your time fire-fighting a crap code base, when you could just have built upon it and really not given it too much extra thought cos it just works).
One way to get some features in that people actually want is open source, or parts of. Plugin and scripting engines etc... And value added, expensive, commercial biased ones on-top of a base product, and a load of community or even third party commercial ones under a licensing scheme.
Now Microsoft added new 'features' to Java and IE etc... but that just got them a period of vendor lock-in based on a monopoly. Now-a-days people are going for browsers based on polished code and design and have an array of third party plugins they can have. But loads of features.... Don't we call that bloat and it's been getting slammed for donkeys years.
10-11 hour days just produce shit that's going to take ten times as long, if not more to clean up. While you could be working on building a loyal customer base and selling a solid product that new customers are happy to invest in and so your company will grow.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You've already missed your chance. When your boss (or anyone) asks you something ridiculous you need to laugh very loudly in his face immediately. The effect is all in the timing. A delay in your response makes him think that there is some possibility of making the idea work.
I answer this as I answer anyone asking for this kind of work conditions.
If you want charity, go to a charity organization. Don't work for free, end of story.
I have something to sell (my time) employer need something (my time) and he or her should pay for it.
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
How many hours per week are you going to work to try and find a technical answer to a business problem? I've been in a startup or two in my time, and I must say that you can't create enough features to make up for a bad business plan! There are hard questions that need answers here: 1) Why is your software not selling with the features the business plan originally called for? Is the software too expensive for the target market? Does the software solve a problem the target market doesn't really have? 2) Do you have more reliable knowledge of the target market with the new feature set than you did with the original? Or, are you shooting in the dark? 3) Do you have a list of customers who will be interested in the software once a new set of features are created? 4) If you think the software is valuable, are there other business-related reasons why it's not selling? Bad licensing? Unattractive terms? My experience is that bloating software no one is buying with features just creates bloated software that no one is buying. There is something more fundamental that is wrong here.
Most of the posts so far are of the "you have the upper hand; demand compensation or bail" variety. While this is reasonably sound advice, it all comes down to your current situation. I'd say:
if you're comfortable changing jobs and potentially moving to a new city {
Propose that you deserve a share in the company, and as a fallback refuse the overtime.
if that conversation gets adversarial {
Smile, agree to do your best, and look for a new job.
} else {
sweet. You got what you want, make sure its a project you're willing to love and put your heart into it.
}
} else {
Suck it up, you're stuck where you are until you find your confidence and feel comfortable with the nuclear solution.
}
I quit... If you were to tell him, that you wanted to work only 5 hours a day and get paid for 8 because you're not feeling as well as you should, he's laugh as you. Why should you care if his company isn't profitable? It is a job - you have no stake in it other than trading hours for dollars. He wants a better deal - that's all. Usually, that is the sign of someone who doesn't understand how to run a business - either way, you should start looking for a new position, since he'll go belly up no matter what you decide...
I spent a bunch of time researching this and figuring out "how you get the most work out of programmers."
What it comes down to is that there are no shortcuts. Treating your programmers well is the best way to get the most work out of them. That doesn't mean pampering them, but 10 hour days are just going to hammer them if kept on for more than two weeks.
Here are the blog posts:
http://tersesystems.com/2007/08/16/getting-work-out-of-programmers-part-1
http://tersesystems.com/2007/08/20/getting-work-out-of-programmers-part-2
Good luck.
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we are a startup with almost a year live. None of the employees have ownership/stock and all are salary
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No one is invested in the future of the company or what happens to the product because no one is going to be rewarded if things go well. Without ownership or profit sharing of some sort, no one who is worth anything will stick around to work 11 hour days unless the work environment is so amazing that they can get compensated other ways. The reality is, without profitability, those alternative means of compensation (extra hardware/software budget, extra flex time/vacation time, etc) won't hold up for long. It sounds like you are working for someone who has read Spolsky but really has no idea what he's on about. Does your SDLC pass the Joel test? (one step builds, testing, source control, bug database, etc etc). Are you working on brand new computers with at least 2 big monitors and more ram and storage space than any reasonable person should ever need? Do you get to set your own schedules as long as you are meeting deadlines/goals/pushes? Are you in offices or cubicles? If cubicles does everyone have a good pair of headphones? Are the cubicles or offices big enough? Is it acceptable for people to take a break and surf slashdot/Youtube/CNN for a few minutes when their brain buffer is blown and they can't concentrate? I'm not talking about come in and surf for 10 hours, but is it an environment where everyone has to be ultra careful about what's up on their screen and makes extra effort to look busy or stressed out enough to be taken seriously or is it the sort of place where people are treated like adults and given the benefit of the doubt as long as they're getting their commits in, QA'd, and past testing by the next milestone/goalpost/sprint/push/whatever?
If you are working for a startup, you really should believe in and be passionate about the product and the company and they should be passionate about you and your team! If it's really such a great idea there ought to be room for ownership and compensation for everyone involved on the ground floor and even the first couple of floors. People are what make a company great. It takes strong leaders, it takes a lot of faith and inspiration in what you are doing and it takes talented and hard working teams who are united in a common goal of making the best damn whatsy-whosit that's ever been dreamed of.
From your post it sounds like you're talking about a half baked company with tolerable but not stellar management and whatever talent the going market rate could buy. Which can be anywhere from pretty good, to so-so to absolutely dismal depending on a lot of factors.
...until the company is profitable.
Uh, yeah, whatever. Things like this NEVER revert. Even if the boss doesn't realize it, he's discussing a permanent change. That salary had better be darn good.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Point your boss at this article by Joel and have him search for "death march": http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/how-hard-could-it-be-five-easy-ways-to-fail.html?partner=fogcreek
This situation is not unusual. But what bosses forget is to enable their employees to WORK more hours rather then just ordering them to do so.
We single geeks waste a lot of time. Do you make breakfast? You COULD be working already having skipped the rush hour making your commute faster IF your boss served breakfast at the office.
Same with doing the shopping. Hire a teen to do it for your employees and they don't need to rush to the shops at the last minute.
Expensive? Not at all, sure it costs a bit of money but the hours saved not just in time but in frustration your employees will vent during the day is huge. THINK of it. How many hours a day are wasted with people complaining about their commute? Enable them to escape it, by leaving earlier/later, and the complaint time is gone and you get a happier employee.
Same with other trivial stuff. Arrange for someone who can do the waiting in line bits. You know, like a secretary. Who does call the energy company to handle the bosses complaint about his personal bill because that time could be better spend on more productive work.
Want more out of your workers? Reduce their non-work load. A person has 100% energy, anything not spend on work is a waste. How many of you have taken a few hours off to take the car to the garage? Have the office flunky do it and gain some productive hours.
Same with the office itself. If a programmer has to load paper into the printer he ain't coding, not thinking about how to solve a valuable problem. So have people to do that.
It really ain't complicated. Get your development team a secretary. Watch productivity soar.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Let me start off by saying: a universal 50-hour work week, for an IT type position, is stupid beyond belief. Your manager/owner is an idiot for even suggesting such a thing, and apparently does not understand others all that well.
Most people do not thrive on such hours; they flounder and fail. It doesn't matter if it's manual labor, doldrum sales work, or polishing the brass on the Titanic (which this sounds oddly similar to). IT work, specifically, seems to be particularly prone to 'fail' when its workers are grossly over-extended for long periods of time (ie, greater than 2-3 weeks).
You sound like you are a relatively small company (under 50 employees, though probably fewer than 30 from the sounds of it). What I would personally suggest is this: be flexible, and do not try to be a larger company before you are. If anything, preference "small, flexible company" type behavior: you're small, you've got the ability to do so still. Being flexible, both with your employees and in general, is an incredibly big strength that larger companies only wish for.
Now, how do you implement such a thing? Well, from personal experience, I think the following might be a good approach (both to the benefit of the employee - making it a favorable/good/preferential place to work):
* Allow for flexible schedules. Thirty hours one week, 60 the next, maybe a couple days off here and there - who cares? Productivity is not measured in hours worked - that's why they are salaried, isn't it? "A dollar a day" - a set cost - isn't exactly the best intention for putting someone under salary. If it is, please reconsider. Personally (and I'm sure this applies to many others) I'm insanely productive for a week or two of 40-60 hour weeks, start to flag, and then rebound a couple weeks later.
* give employee incentives for performance, inventiveness, and creativity. If someone implements a new feature in the period of a week that can be deployed, working 80 hours in the process, give them a bonus. If someone works 80 hours cleaning up code (and actually working),
* give group incentives for milestones met. This might be difficult depending on the structure of your company and the type of product you're trying to release.
* come to grips that you will be operating in the red until you become profitable, and this may take some time. It may never happen, but doing your best (short of abusing your employees) is the best way to approach it. (Throwing money at things does not fix everything, but it sure helps when almost everyone is strapped for cash.)
* If deadlines keep slipping, consider finding better managers/management. (If the 'management' is your boss, consider finding another job yourself.)
Of course, doing these things would likely require that your company has some sort of internal structure allowing for groups of people to be gone at any given time, good inter-department communication, and so on. For instance, the interface group should always have someone on hand for the API group to shoot ideas off of; the API group should always have someone available for the interface group to ask questions of; and so on - however you do it, there can't be gaps in communication.
With flexible schedules, it will also obviously be important to keep communication going between independent members. Shelling out a little cash for company smart phones, or some sort of integrated communication system (Exchange, Zimbra, whatever) might be a good idea.
Forcing your salaried programmers to work 50 - even 40 hours - every single week is, well... foolhardy. Anything else is up for debate. Please do consider that people work to live, not live to work: they have families to whom they have responsibilities, desires they which to meet, and lives they wish to live. Leaving the office at 7PM on a Friday is not likely one of them.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I've been putting in 10+ for over 25 years now. In my day, we never even conceived of less than 10 as reasonable. And that didn't include a one hour lunch, which was the ONLY time we would fuck off maybe playing some ping pong. Take a look at Apple. Most of their guys are doing 90 hrs / week. And it shows in the refinement of their products.
cat
Did anyone ask during the interview process how many hours of work per week is expected?
When negotiating salary and benefits before accepting the offer, did you ask to become a stakeholder?
Unless you are paid consulting rates by the hour, management's first offer will specify an annual salary and benefits where you get paid the same amount of money whether you work 37, 74, or 90 hours a week.
There are lots of folks willing to put in the time, but they may still like you better.
Do not work at a shop that didn't make you feel comfortable asking those questions, if you need to ask them.
My current boss asked me what I thought of asking all employees to work 10-11 hour days until the company is profitable
It's a horrible idea, and I know what I'm talking about, I've got the professional background.
Long work hours are way overrated, especially for activities requiring thinking, problem solving and/or creativity. Chances are very good that it will lead to no improvement at all, since those additional hours are spent creating more problems and bugs that need more additional hours to solve.
Time does not feed linearily into productivity. If you force people to work long hours, you will find them creating more breaks. You can't stop them doing that, because they don't even notice themselves. But they will start to go for coffee, WC or smokes more often, or simply space out right at their desk. And in the end, you aren't after longer hours just because, you are after higher productivity. Improving processes (yes, I know I start to sound like a consultant, but that part is true), reducing waste time (like most meetings), raising employee motivation and other things like that are much more likely to increase productivity than longer hours are.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I worked those hours daily for a long time in a high stress environment (weekends too). Not only did it completely burn me out, I have serious health issues because of it.
Take care of yourself. No amount of money is worth your health and sanity.
I'm surprised that more people haven't talked about this. So much of management is braindead when it comes to cheaping out on work environment.
Get everyone as many 24 inch monitors as they want. Max out RAM. Get a site license to a technical library. Give programmers some freedom to order tools. Make sure that people can work remotely without hassle.
Have decent meeting rooms with a dedicated box for remote desktop, and monitors or projectors. It's crazy how much time is wasted tracking down projectors, carrying equipment, plugging it in, and getting it to work.
10 people at a meeting. 5 minutes fiddling with setup. Meeting after meeting. Do the math.
If you require a sprint period where people have to work overtime, end the period with a cheap lunch on friday and tell them everyone has to get out and go home.
Have meeting hours and "Do Not Disturb" hours for programmers. Encourage more team collaboration, pair programming, and mentoring. Encourage HOWTO wikis. Encourage lunch time tech talks. Make secure desktop sharing software available, and encourage it's use.
Food. Food. And more food. We're dogs and monkeys - give us a little biscuit for a buck, and we can be quite pleased. Protein shakes are good, because they're tasty, can replace a meal, and you can eat them while working.
Be flexible on time. Have standard core hours, but otherwise flex time. Make life easy on people. Allow packages to be delivered at the office. Stop the idiot policies against using computers for "personal use". I also use my internet, cel phone, and computers at home for business use. Let's all get over it.
Make work an opportunity to improve your skills and work habits, instead of a time to be chained to an oar as a galley slave. Treat people like they're professionals who want to do a good job, write good code, and get good at what they do. Treat them like they're part of a team and want the project to succeed. Help them to do it.
This is the point at which you organize a union.
This boss probably has no clue, so his startup probably isn't going to succeed. Most don't. What you make in this phase is all you're going to get.
Get you resume together and get another job ASAP. You boss is delusional, the company is going down. Nothing you can say to him is going to change those facts.
It will be easier for you to get a job before you are laid off.
[from a former start-up veteran]
I have worked in all sorts of situations. In some, the environment was so stimulating I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning, and sad when the day was over. Most software people I know have gone through the same process. Young people go to work for older people, work on handshake, verbal promises, no written specification, with a schedule written by someone who is clueless about how long things take. Ego powers them through a project or two, but don't realize several things... Youthful energy doesn't last forever, good health doesn't last forever, business people often tell you whatever you want to hear to keep things going. This sort of behavior can get a startup going, until the hammer drops. The IRS comes through and you find out the employer who said he was paying you under the table has 1099'd you and you owe big bucks. The company incorporates, and the new accountant tells your boss you can't be paid under the table. The boss tells you accounting says you are what's called an exempt employee and cannot be paid overtime. Eventually you get a little smarter and you ask for a royalty, but the boss is still one step ahead of you and you accept a percentage of the net, not the gross, but you don't get to say anything about expense control, and since the boss is driving a mercedes and always flies first class and always seems to have plenty of coke, there is never any profits, and your royalty isn't worth sniffing at. Then you get smarter and you ask for stock. The boss agrees, but doesn't tell you there are different kinds. You are thrilled to get 10,000 shares but don't realize those are non-voting shares and the boss has fifty million shares. When the company needs some money, they issue another hundred million shares to sell to clueless investors, and your 10,000 shares get diluted out from under you, and you don't find out until later. Eventually vesting times come and you have to fork up money to buy the shares at promised option price. Soon afterward they issue more stock and the actual value of your stock becomes a fraction of what you paid. Then they need a marketing VP, and he wants 10 million shares also, then the CEO, he get 40 million. Then the boss feels he needs to hire ten more people, and then they need to move into bigger digs. The boss discovers it's not what you own, but what you have the use of, so he leases a rolls (he needs it to impress potential clients). Meanwhile you are working on a 286-16 and the salesman is carrying a state of the art pentium notebook, and he gets a leased car too. The boss declines to buy you that $200 software toolkit that would make your job easier because accounting says he needs to watch expenses. Then they need to drop $40,000 on a set of magazine ads, a full page each week for 20 weeks in PC Magazine. The boss tells you he has to wait a couple of days to issue checks because they are waiting on cash flow. Then a few days later, you go to work, and the place is closed. you can't even get to the computer you brought from home to use for work because they couldn't afford to get you one, and it takes a while for you to wrangle it away from the creditors who want to liquidate any assets in sight to get some of their money back. This scenario is not just some story... It happens every day in silicon valley, and berkeley, and anytown, USA. It only takes a few of these experiences and you start to learn more about contracts, what you will and won't do for money, or promises of money, and to "Get it in Writing".
Most startups fails Startups are all about taking risks. Typically, you work your ass off for stock options and BELOW average pay. Most of the time you'd have been better off working for typical pay at a non-startup. Most startups fails
BTW, you're a salaried employee. 40 hour weeks don't exist for salaried employees.
40 hour weeks are for hourly employees.
I would never hire an engineer, programmer, scientist, (you get the idea) who expected to work 40 hour weeks.
Welcome to the craft. You're going to work long hours and if you're any good, you'll advance to pay levels and job conditions that make it worth while. But if you don't think so, you're welcome to go.
It's amazing that you didn't know that when you signed up.
It's also amazing that you agreed to a job in a start up without either stock options.
Tell him to go fuck himself and find a better job. I'd spit in his face on the way out.
What should I say to him when we talk about this again?
Here
That should at least give you:
My opinion? See above.
I do realize that this is a business/job decision. I would say "Hell no!" quickly as my personal life is infinitely more valuable to me than my work life. However, for all the people here saying crap like "optimum productivity" or "studies have shown that the best work comes in..." or whatever blah blah I'm reading, I would like to remind some of you who grew up during the BBS days and watched Slashdot (or Linux when it was still primordial) to think of all the great software written by very passionate coders who are "legend" for "staying up drinking Mountain Dew for 20 hours to find the solution" or whatever the hell nostalgic memory you have. Seems to me many people here will brag about doing this as if they had seen Nirvana, but would resist doing it with petty excuses when they are asked or paid. Hmmm.
...used to be a library...now it's just a mind-cemetary
I would put in those kind of hours If i know that it could save a already good running company from disaster due to some really rare situation. I would also put in those ours as an owner of a startup, but I wouldn't expect anyone on salary to do the same. If he wants 10-11 hours for a startup, ask for a share in the company.
Do you want to help build a sustainable company, or do you just want to suck as much money as you can out of anyone who will pay?
If the company isn't profitable, perhaps there's a reason your boss is asking for help. How about you take responsibility,pitch in, and help make a sustainable company.
Sometimes, life is not perfect. Do what is necessary to ensure that everyone around you has a job, too.
One of the test for an exempt from OT employee has to do with the lack of a schedule (i.e. time clock). There are other tests but this one is important.
Since the company is not profitable it is silly to demand more $$ but it is not silly to demand compensation and considerations. You might get title to the chair, laptop, and other assets in lieu of OT compensation.
Bottom line if the company is not profitable ya all need to make an honest assessment to see if the company can honestly become profitable.
It gets tangled when the bank does not know. I have seen legal actions follow executives cross country where the company obtained loans from a bank based on cooked books.
Filing for bankruptcy does not mean closing the doors.
Employees should know how powerful a labor lean can be.
Run when the CEO has his girl run out and get his check certified at the bank --- then all the other checks bounce.
Long days can be more productive but not for sustained periods of time.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
If you make everyone work 10-11 hours a day, you will get LESS useful work out of them than you did at 7-8 hours a day.
There are several reasons for this. The most important ones are:
- Working longer hours makes people tired. Tired people make mistakes. These mistakes take more time to be found and fixed.
- Working longer hours makes people tired. Tired people slow down. Thus any given feature will take longer to implement.
- Working longer hours gives people less time at home with their families, hobbies, sleep time and general de-stressing. This tends to make people depressed. Depressed people are more likely to slow down and make mistakes (see above), and might even quit on you.
- People who work longer hours will demand overtime pay, in some form or other. It is cheaper to hire more people at normal working hours.
--- The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it ---
If there is no even hypothetical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow then your boss is asking for a lot more of your most precious and irresplaceable commodity, your time, for no more compensation current or future. He is thus greatly devaluing the worth of your time and efforts by demanding more for the same money. I would point out that he is grossly out of line. He is effectively changing the terms of the contract. That said it is pretty common for me to work around 50 hours a week when I care about a project regardless of whether there is more money. If the project itself doesn't turn you on and there is no more reward then I would say no. He does mean 5 days a week right? If he also means at least one weekend day more often than not then tell him to take a leap. The only one your extra work would benefit in that case is your boss and other equity partners. Share the wealth (if any) or stick with the agreed contract.
Hire more staff
So the staff are being asked to significantly increase their input into the business "until it is profitable"?
To me that strongly suggests that the business is not viable - certainly the business plan to which it has been run for the first year was simply wrong if they now need to ask for this.
My recommendation would be to get your resume out there. I say that not because you're being exploited but rather because a business being run this way is unlikely to thrive or survive.
There is no point in asking for stock in a company that doesn't have a viable business plan.
I'm vested... literally. I get a damn pension. It's going to be frakkin awesome because it's plausible (fully funded and low enough that it will probably never be cut/fail) and reasonable and it goes on top of social security and the 401k.
You will be laid-off when you are ~5 years away from that pension.
So long, and thanks for all the fish...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
First of all ask him WHY he asked you in the first place.
- "They misunderestimated me."
Sure, 10 - 11 hours programming per day is feasible. With a few constraints though. 1) You have a clear idea if what you are producing, 2) you're experienced enough to know result is imminent, 3) you have many small successes, 4) you are left in peace and 5) you do this with a maximum of 3 to 6 weeks. These constraints preclude doing so for a company you don't own.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Measuring productivity in lines of code is as stupid as measuring health by how much a surgeon cuts.
http://37signals.com/rework/ ;)
The answer is "No, not unless you give us a share of the company you greedy, fat, management pig."
Haven't read the article or indeed anyone's comments. Is that wrong? Oh, well. Immediate thoughts that spring to mind are: This is asking a lot from an employee. Involvement in a decision breeds commitment to it. I'd recommend wide, open discussions with all employees. If they feel their concerns are being taken into consideration then they'll be less resistant. If they feel trampled on you'll probably end up with passive resistance anyway and that's not a great way to get productive.
Instinct also says that more hours doesn't necessarily mean more work. May be better to trim the fat off existing processes and gain productivity that way. Remove hinderances from employee productivity and set out to inspire them, not control them, for instance. (Phil Brook - no account!)
Working 10, 12, even 18 hours a day for weeks on end is no problem as long as you have nothing else in your life and you REALLY LIKE the work you're doing. This is exceedingly rare, but I have spent a few years of my life doing just that and it was rewarding in its way.
However, being MADE to work substantially more than 40 hours a week is counter-productive. The staff tire and become unmotivated, and some will leave, which (as should be obvious) costs the team more time than it's worth in recruiting new productive staff.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Succeeding with Agile has a good second on overtime (pages 287-291). Page 289 has a graph (Figure 15.1) to show your boss. It shows velocity over time while overtime is used. You do get a short term benefit, but at the cost of a long term cost.
| X-_
|XXXX_
|XXXXX
|XXXXX
+------
12345
Week one shows before overtime and a normal, sustainable velocity.Weeks 2-5 show weeks with overtime. Week 2, big old increase, same with week 3. Mild increase in week 4, big drop in week 5. Weeks 6+ (not shown, post-overtime) you will start to recover and after X weeks you will be back to previous normal, sustainable velocity.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Work for 10 hours than being more productive than with an 8 hour schedule all you get is simply that you burn out the people who work with you. I have been in the industry now for 15 years and this is mostly my personal experience. Your boss thinks in the category of assembly line robots, aka more hours more work done. For people working in creative industries that does not work out that way only for short period of times.
While it is okay to work hard for your salary, you can't let someone burn you out so that they can get rich. Most likely when you drop dead this boss would not even have time to come to your funeral.
Seems to me that your company needs more money.
What your boss is asking for is free money from his employees, as some guys already calculated, the extra time would be worth between 20 - 30 thousands dollars per year, that's the money you would be giving him.
One option would be if your boss negotiated a form of future payment, like stocks or just plain the amount worth of work in a few years.
You should also consider that the ideal solution would be your boss getting money from investors, not from employees. This way he could contract more people or just pay you guys more to work for more hours. If I were you I would be worried about the reason why he won't do that, and prefers to ask for money from his (probably) financially ignorant employees.
One reason is that his whole business is going downhill (for whatever reason), and no investor is willing to invest.
Another reason could be your boss is plain selfish, and doesn't want to pay back the investor, be in money or participation in the company. If that's the case (and I think it is), it's improbable he will give anything back to his hard working employees, at least nothing worth the extra effort.
At the end of the day, the market is a way to put resources (be people or 'stuff') for its best use... If your boss can't manage to pay his employees what they are worth while other companies can, odds are he is wasting society resources that could be put to a better use.
What I mean is, get another job.
as someone who has been on both sides of this, I think you should quit.
I have been both the manager and the managed in situations where it was expected that those not reaping the lions share of the profit perform most of the work and are expected to increase work until the one owning the lions share is happy.
The truth is that the lion will never be happy, and therefore neither will anyone who works there.
your time > money > energy.
to consult a labor lawyer. As far as I know (IANAL), if you require your workers to work x number of hours they no longer qualify as "salaried, exempt" employees under US law. At which point you have to pay overtime over 40 hours/week. Your boss might get the project done but bankrupt the company due to lawsuits.
And if this is a startup and no one has any stock options, no wonder no one is working 10-12 hour days...Tell the ownership not to be such cheapskates. Working for a startup carries risks to the workers, since odds are the startup will go under. so they deserve a cut of the ownership on the off-chance the company succeeds.
Meanwhile, start looking for a new employer. You're working for management with a short-term mentality at best.
We are the 198 proof..
Code quality goes down as work hours go up!
You can do a limited stint, where people can work for extended periods for a short while, a couple of weeks, this works great if everything is planned out and everything can be implemented and tested without the need for external contact. But...
If you have not planned everything out and is doing some critical design work in this time, it will most likely fail due to the stress level taking priority over quality, the "getting it done" syndrome.
If you extend the period beyond a few weeks (Not considering employee motivation here) you end up with worse and worse quality code and sloppy tests. This is the upgraded "getting it done" syndrome.
Motivating employees is a whole other matter... Many and varied steps can be taken, but it is up to your unique situation to figure it out... Increased salary works somewhat, a paid-for holiday after the stint I have found useful in my own company, giving out extra options or even shares for the extra work might also be a good idea... Do note however that shares and options only work if there is a positive feedback going on from management... In your described situation where it is to save the company, this might not go down well... (Work many extra hours for some weeks, get "paid" with worthless papers if it fails... Where do I sign out?)
What he meant was this:
"Listen up... we've been live for about a year and this shit it getting old. I was really hoping to sell this whole adventure for a tidy profit and get the fuck out of dodge... So... I'm gonna need ya to come in on Saturdays... In fact come in on Sundays as well... Since you have no stake in the company you are expendable and the moment the ink is dry on the purchase and sale expect to be shown the door with zero fan fair. Now get your asses to work and make me a {million,billion}aire!"
I find it rather scary that your boss is so clueless on how to grow the business that he's grasping at straws. I guess the whole concept of actually talking to your customers and perspective customers on what improvements they'd like in the product must seem crazy.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
We have near 10% unemployment and the company is losing money. You need me to work alot more hours so that the company can just turn a profit. Then maybe I can keep my job so the company does not go bankrupt and you get rich.
This just tells me the company is doing poorly. There are people who will sense this and work hard since they want work. These are the types of people who don't like to leave, particularly in a bad economy. Then there are others who will immediately start applying for other jobs. However, given how poor the economy is they may be stuck.
I would be looking to get out. At best, I would pretend that I am working these hours without really working.
there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
And I'll bet you can't quote the source for that meme.
>He read something from Joel Spolsky that said the best way to get new customers is to add new features
Maybe he should also read what Joel Spolsky said about working more hours per week. See mistake no. 5 in following article http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/how-hard-could-it-be-five-easy-ways-to-fail.html?partner=fogcreek
Sure Joel is a respected and successful guy. BUT. The linked stuff by Joel talks about when he was a founder working hard to make HIS company successful. There is quite a different motivation there than asking a salaried guy to bust his ass for nothing so the founder can have a successful company.
This situation is exactly why I switched to doing contract work. The more hours my employer wants me to work more hours he pays me for. I've also worked for equity in start-ups, but I got to believe the product will succeed and get in on the first funding round. When they start going for third and forth rounds you have to objectively consider the companies valuation and how much your equity has been diluted. It may make sense to cut your losses and start looking for a new job. As for the number hours a coder can work I think it varies greatly depending on the individual. I can do 50 hours a week with out burning out, but, if I go above 55 hours I can only sustain the effort for a two or three weeks. I can do because I don't have any family responsibilities; I can't imagine somebody with a couple of kids working this much. I wonder if there have be any serious studies on what causes coder burn-out. A lot of the posts talk about the mental effort involved in the job, but after 15 years of programming I find most of the time it's just plain old boredom that gets to me. A brief period of mental activity, where I figure out how to solve the problem, is followed by hours of boiler plate coding. Checking function returns, handling error conditions, logging error messages; that sort of thing. Other things that tend to burn my out are outrageously long compile times and tacking down who submitted the code that broke the poll.
Why not?
I run my own business selling a live chat solution to other websites ( http://www.imsupporting.com )
We worked endless hours.. Sometimes from 7am till gone midnight bringing in new features and more.
Once we were in profit and the software matured we went to do normal hours again ( sometimes less ) and could function as a normal business.
Just remember to work hard and play hard.
Its in your best interest to make it work.
Good luck.
For relatively short periods of time it's possible to maintain focus on 10+ hours programming days. My observation, though, is that two things happen after it's gone on for too long. First, the quality of the code plunges as fatigue sets in. Second, while the programmer sits at the monitor for the extended hours, less and less real work is done proportional to the time invested. In general, extended hours should be used only to meet deadlines, and developers should be given a schedule which keeps them rested and able to carry on normal lives outside work.
Why do places think they can work people 50-60 hour weeks and pay them like they are working 40 hour weeks? Ask for time and a half for all hours worked over 40 hours, double time if you go over 50 hours, and if you work more than ten hours a day, the company has to provide at least one meal a day to employees. You also need to ask for profit sharing or stock options. Worst case scenario is comp-time, but I would only bring that up if they shoot down everything else.
If you are asking your employees to work longer hours without compensation, you are going to get burned out employees, and you start experiencing the Law of Diminishing returns (if he is a business major, he will understand this concept). Shoot, you will get this even if you do compensate after a while. Burned out employees lead to stupid mistakes being made, and bugs poping into your products, which could lead to higher costs down the road during your debugging sessions.
My employer - a large, well-known company - asked my group to start working 48-hour weeks back in October.
I gave my notice in November and now have a job that expects 40 hours per week.
The big problem with this request is that it reveals one of two things.
Either the business plan is in trouble, you should have been profitable by now, or they can't project profits in the timeframe that they have funding for, or worse, there is no proper plan.
Either way, they are going bust unless you guys help out. The sensible comments about asking for stock may or may not reveal this, but if they can't have a sensible discussion about where the business stands then its for sure that they are staring down the barrel. If they won't hand stock over then my guess is that they have non left to hand over, if that's the case then they have played thier last card; your job is gone.
The rational action in that situation is to stay there and get your cheque but be looking for work like crazy.
On the other hand, if they will talk about stock, will discuss the business plan - this could be an opportunity. Participate if you believe in it.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Programming is one of those jobs where adding more hours is almost certain to be counter productive. Study after study has clearly indicated that most programmers are truly productive maybe six hours of their work day. An eight hour work day allows for two hours of various busy work plus planning, documentation, communication, and contemplation.
Adding yet more hours is going to result in very low quality work, especially if they feel demoralized as a result. So much so that it will quickly prove to be very counter productive. What I typically wind up seeing is, at first, productivity as usual for the first couple of days. Then the fatigue sets in and morale begins to decline. After that, even more work day productivity is reduced and more and more time is spent fixed the mistakes from the day before. It quickly spirals into weekends which further pushes morale downward and resentment through the roof.
It can work so long as the duration is very short and with a specific goal in mind. But as stated, its very open ended and will shatter morale. As a result, the likely result is an exodus of workers to better jobs where they'll actually be valued and not forced to constantly create and fix a slurry of forced mistakes while giving up their nights and weekends.
Think about it - how often have you heard some idiot boss come forward and say, "You are all working double shifts and will not be paid for it!", and heard of good results? I've never heard it work for any creative work. Programmers are not assembly line workers and chances are, your workers will find a place which actually understands the difference.
It really sounds like the boss is a dope. If he needs more sales, the best thing he can do is invest in sales. Without sales, it doesn't matter how many features exist. Sounds like he's pushing the rock up the wrong hill. After all, if he needs more sales, its hardly surprising he to hear he needs more sales. Salesmen generate sales - not features.
You need to get your employer to convert the company to an ESOP(Employee Stock Ownership Plan), whereby you would be compensated for the extra work through ownership in the company. It would need to be set up so that you get additional shares up front and those shares are fully vested, not after you complete the work. This is a win for the employer as well as it allows additional monetary borrowing opportunities for times like this. That means while you get the initial shares of fully vested ownership up front, he now can get get extra money to hire and incentives(company ownership) to offer to new additional employees. It is also better than a publicly traded company because the original people(and partially you now) are still in control of the company, and need not bow to the whims of investors who only care about the bottom line and not the company and it's people. Remember Wall Street the movie, you don't need that. ESOP may be the answer here.
The point is you need to be compensated in some fashion. It can't be just a promise to compensate you. The company maybe so far gone you will never get that money. You will get burned in that case. You also wouldn't want a partnership in the company as that would make you liable for anything the owners have already done to get the company in this position in the first place.
If they still refuse to pay you I would leave. People don't realize that you get older every day. If you are going to put your heart and soul in something you better damn well be compensated for it and I don't mean time and a half. One morning you will wake up and realize you don't have the energy to do things like that anymore and your pocket will be empty, and you will wonder why you were ever so naive. You are being asked to destroy your current relationships with people, ending all ties with your family as you will never be home, and to give up your current state of health. For what? 10-11 hours? let's be realistic, it will be 12-14 hours with a lunch break. Do you commute? 13-16 hour/day total now. Still need to eat and sleep. 22-23 hours gone. You really think your wife will stay with you seeing you only 1 hour per day?
Let's recap what happens when you are a naive do-gooder.
1. Destroy all current relationships with people.
2. End all ties to your family.
3. Lose your health.
4. Now you have to pay alimony.
FYI: Federal laws still prohibit working continuous abnormal above and beyond 40hr weeks even if you are salaried. Only jobs where you are the boss/supervisor, or in an industry that has worked 12 hour shifts since the dawn of time(my job) are exempt. Note that I am paid well though. I will estimate that I make double/triple the amount of what you are making now. But realize that I work every day 12-14 hours until the job is done with 1 ~48 hour shift(yes I'm up that long). Typically 21-25 days straight, my record is 52 days straight, no breaks, no weekends, everyday. Then I get about 2-3 weeks off.
Do you see my point? I work hard, but I get compensated for it in pay and time off. You need to stand up for yourself and demand the same. Otherwise in reality an 8 hour day at McD's is probably more profitable and rewarding.
I was asked by my boss to put in 10+ hour days. At first, I debated with him and I eventually capitulated and did what he asked. A month or two went by, and as a single, freshly graduated programmer, I had no problems with this. Then I met my girlfriend (currently my wife). After several months of 10+ hour days, plus an hour each way of commuting, I burned myself out. My brain was mush, my day consisted of work-eat-sleep. I was unhappy. I went back to 8 hour days without telling my boss, and things improved. A few weeks after doing so, my boss, again, approached me and guilt tripped me back into 10+ hour days. The funny thing is that he read the exact same article by Joel and came to the exact same conclusion as the OP's boss. I said fuck no, but eventually capitulated.
I started handing out resumes and had a few interviews. I got offered a job that tripled my salary (I was making very little money and was considered below the poverty line with the old job). I told my boss to shove the 10+ hour week where the sun don't shine and started my new stress free life as a very small cog in a large corporate machine.
And here is how I got screwed. Not too long ago my former company got bought out by Google for a heaping sum of money. A sum that had many zeroes following a single digit. Sometimes I wonder if I stayed, how much of those millions I would see. Did most of that money go to investors? or did my former colleagues get it? I take comfort that the amount of money I have made since then allowed me to get married, have many expensive vacations, buy a nice car and 2000sq ft. house.
Try telling RNs that they have to work an extra 3 hours for no pay, and see how fast you have a strike on your hands. RNs complain when they only make 1.5X for overtime.
Asking for everyone to work 3-4 hours a day extra for no extra pay is basically asking for back-breaking slave labor that will only profit the pharaoh. Make a break for it as soon as you figure which of your coders knows how to turn sticks into snakes.
Small companies dont follow processes.
Own a critical module, make sure only you can handle that with no or confusing documents.
update something major in the code, after you write the documents. Ensure that if someone new has to work on this, they need atleast 3 months to understand and make a meaningful change.
Making all this could take sometime.
Then do the talking....
"Long work hours" to me is the same as saying sleep deprivation. I am a psychiatry resident and have been working 60-100 hour weeks for years. The cognitive and physiological effects of sleep deprivation have been my pet research topic (now in the form of a book looking for publication).
Are 10-11 hour work days feasible? Biologically, no.
The cognitive side effects you will suffer go like this;
1) The frontal lobes of your brain will start to do a terrible job of "executive functioning" and your capacity for multitasking and concentration will suffer for it.
2) Your ability to learn from mistakes will go down--in your case, you'll fail to note when your code produces unwanted results.
3) You'll be less able to contain your emotional responses. You'll be irritable and and more likely to catastrophize your mistakes.
4) The loss of concentration and reduced mood (coupled with poor sleep) will resemble depression.
Physically;
1) You are going to have metabolic changes-weight gain and difficulty managing your blood sugar. If you are not diabetic you may face it in the future (Type II)
2) It is a long term risk for death, typically from cardiovascular causes e.g. heart attacks and strokes.
3) Your immune system will be impaired. You'll get sick more easily and heal slowly.
4) Your pain threshold will lower along with your coordination. Get used to spilling hot coffee on yourself.
Look at what some other Slashdotters have written about their personal experiences with long work hours. Some have already confirmed this anecdotally but it is all supported by research.
Sleep deprivation can resemble a some psychiatric illnesses such as ADHD and depression.
So is the 10-11 hour work day feasible? What do you want from your life?
> None of the employees have ownership/stock
So why would anyone agree to these working conditions, unless they had incentive?
Get ready to lose a lot of people this way.
things like this are illegal in Norway!
This is blinging
Short bursts of overtime to meet a goal are understandable. I've been there where the company needed to get a prototype running for a trade show. We'd put in overtime for a few weeks and get the job done, then go back to the normal rate of burn. If they ask for anything longer, I'd tell them Hell No, unless you are willing to pay extra for it.
I'd also become religious and insist on not working on the sabbath, etc.....(If they fire you for THAT, they can see you in federal court).
the truth is out there!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A startup would need to give me equity stake in the company, or a high salary (not possible for most startups) to work 10-11 hour days
tell him that its a great idea if he doesn't mind when a "button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers."
Well, I program Control Systems for an industrial construction company. The Construction Industry feels it can reasonably "ask" you to do just about anything in terms of hours, because of the simple fact that the market is saturated and both you and they know that they can replace you if you think about rocking the boat. Let me give you an example: Just this year I was told on a Friday evening (was called at home) that I needed to drive out to boondocks (this bit of it being a few hours away) to be at a Mill Monday morning of a field install; pack for 5 days. Seemed short notice, but fine I'm a team player. Get down there to find out that wasn't the real deal they had made for the contract. I was there working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 7 weeks. Unions exist to protect the employees from just that reason: to protect the employees from unreasonable demands. But their logic is sound in that you generally have to push quite hard for people to jump ship without another boat waiting.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
We are facing a similar situation... "we expect and need you to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, until the project is done (18 months)."
My reply... "Well I expected to win the Mega-Millions last year, but that expectation was not met either. Life sucks, but expectations go unfulfilled." Then if pressed... ba-bye..!!
In my opinion it's time to execute your exit plan. This company is down the tubes and they know it. They are only trying desperate measures that aren't likely to work. It will only get worse, soon they'll have a meeting where they will say we can only pay you half salary, but when things get better we'll promise to make up the difference.... That's what happened to me. And I jumped shipped to the company I'm at now. Who by the way are looking for employees. http://vpi-corp.com/ They are great to work for, have good benefits, only rarely ask you to work overtime, and that's usually because your own code is broken and you need to fix it. Once it's fixed then your off. Good luck on your exit strategy.
> If I got stuck on a problem, I would do laundry, wash dishes, rake the yard, anything else that needed doing, and usually a solution would occur to me while I was doing something else.
This. Too many managerial types think that development is just something forced, which it can't, no more than trying harder to force a birth when the baby isn't ready.
Oftentimes, solution just presents itself when your brain has thought it over.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
That's not the worst idea in the history of bad ideas, but it's pretty bad. Beyond somewhere between 4-6 hours of productive mental work per day, the brain gets tired and your attention and focus goes to hell. Most of us fill out the rest of the day with non-demanding stuff like reading e-mail, gossiping with our coworkers, surfing the Internet, doing paperwork, etc. Push people to work 10+ hours a day and I predict that (a) your best people will suddenly find a job somewhere else, and (b) those remaining will actually slow the project down because of extra bugs and other lost productivity due to mistakes. Or (c), you will ship a bug-riddled, barely-working mess more or less on schedule, like a certain game company is notorious for doing. And lets not forget (d) disgruntled, overworked programmer sells your IP to his new employer or creatively re-arranges your development servers.
Personally, I wish we'd move to either 6-hour work days or a 4 day work-week. I'd rather have the extra day off than fake working for about 10 hours of the week (that 2 hours of the day where I can't concentrate on productive work any more and do mindless crap).
---dragoness
Really, don't they just have to buy out 50% + 1? Do you have a citation for that? (Not doubting, just would be handy for reference.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It has been my experience that a given person will only do a certain amount of work regardless of how much time he/she is in the office. The boss should be asking how they can motivate people to work more productively rather than assuming that more hours equals more work.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
There are a few issues at stake.
#1) Some locations may have manditory over time levels, so after 8 hours they must be paid over time, or face civil suits, and fines.
#2) Some employees will burn out, and burn out fast.
#3) Unhappy employees = Lower Quality, which ultimately equates to higher long term costs.
#4) Loss of employees, and high turn around rates, which will also add to long term costs.
#5) Most programmers I know, will work at their leisure after hours anyways, from the comfort of their home.
All of these, will ultimately cost more money, in the long term, and possibly more then hiring a few more programmers. But if they are not profitable, they really have to look at what is their core requirements, and services. Once you have these defined, redefine the organization for these, and streamline and possibly reduce the staffing to a level that can support these items. Remember many of the dot.coms in the late 90's went away for one of 2 reasons, a bad business plan, or trying to do too much with too little. The ones that survived, did 1 thing, and did that 1 thing well.
There must be something missing from this summary. What boss in his right mind expects salaried employees to work 30% more hours without getting paid more or earning some equity? Is the job market just absolutely terrible where you're located (i.e. they have no other options, so won't quit)? Are they, in fact, being paid above-market salaries? Are you working on something so incredibly cool (though it would be hard to imagine what) that they're likely to comply with your boss's request? If none of these things are true, then tell your boss, "If you do this they will quit. Maybe not immediately, but as soon as they can find something better. And most things will be 'better'."
Back in November I wrote an article on the effects of sustained overtime. I've never seen it work long term for any organization.
Really the question should be to yourself, and it should be exactly the same question that your boss is asking you: Are you the right person for this job?
It's perfectly acceptable for you to decide that you aren't the right person. Maybe all of the other staff are the wrong people too. But the job is what it is. I don't bat an eyelid to working a 12-hour day , but maybe that isn't right for you, and that's fine.
ORLY? Gee, thank you mr.Tom Sawyer, sir!
Remember those phrases by heart, kids, they are a dead giveaway. He learned them from a textbook on manipulation^Wmotivation.
His questions are, of course, rhetorical and choice of words in them are such to drive you into surrendering your will and your personal wellbeing for a mere recognition ... of your proud masochism - "Yeah, I'm the right person, yay me!" ... you are SO WEIRD, dude!"
"It's perfectly acceptable..." implies that somehow it is not obvious and natural.
"maybe that isn't right for you" implies that you are somehow exception from the norm.
"and that's fine" (third, redundant, affirmation in sentence) = "let me emphasize this for you once more
If you recognize you are being target of psychological manipulation instead of being motivated rationally, get a hell out of there!
Seriously, that's retarded. What Joel said was to show constant improvement in your product, not just add new features that don't work the way customers expect them to because you've got a team chock full of exhausted engineers. Your company would never show up on the Stack Overflow "jobs" site if crunch time was the norm.
:)
You start working your team those kind of hours, you'll lose your best people. We all recognize that crunch time is required from time to time, but you can't crunch all the time
After a period of time your people will get tired. When that happens code productivity will drop along with quality. I went through that where I work when we went 84 days non-stop with 12-16 hour days. We were making so many rookie errors at the end, but, we had a hard drop-dead date that had to be met. It took us months afterwards doing bug fixes. Afterwards a number of us had to take extended vacations so that we could recover (in my case I had to take 7 weeks off).
If you have to work those hours make sure that the people are eating properly and getting at least 1 day a week so that they can take care of the personal business. Good food (not pizza, beer, fries, hamburgers) will help things. We had veggies, yogurt, juices and healthy foods in here and that helped.
Panic now, beat the rush!
If your employer is located in the U.S., you are eligible for overtime and are not considered salaried IF you employer has made such demands. Even if you don't collect NOW, you can talk to the Feds AFTER THE FACT and collect on the employer, if they are still in business. :)
10 hours a day, 4 days a week, I'd be up for that anytime. I'd even get more done in those four days...
There's plenty of evidence that sitting in front of a computer screen for 10+ hours a day is unhealthy, and that you are generally less productive after a certain amount of time working. Certainly there are exceptions, where you can be highly productive in a marathon session, but those occur when the muse strikes, not on demand.
If your boss is dead-set on long days (or at least, 50+ hours a week), you could offer some compromises:
* Extend your pay at an equivalent hourly rate for the extra time. If you were nonexempt you'd get time and a half. Some companies pay a reduced rate. I like equivalent hourly rate.
* Give you a long (2-3 hour) break in the middle of the 10 hour day. Yes this means a very long day, but you can spend that 2-3 hours napping, playing games, buying new toys, or even going home if you live close enough to the office. This also can get you out of rush hour, if you go in early and leave late, thus reducing your overall commute time.
* Instead of 5x10, try 6x8 or 5x9+1x4 or something like that. Yes it means giving up one day out of your weekend but may be less stressful than 5x10.
* Let you work on side projects during that 5x10, say, 4-6 hours a week.
These are just some examples. Of course if he's not dead-set on the 5x10, just convince him that he won't get 2 hours of extra productivity for the 2 hours of extra labor, instead he'll burn you guys out sooner and increase turnover.
if your getting normal wages and nothing more your an employee and nothing more. when the company "becomes profitable" you will still be an employee and nothing more. being part owner of a company, creating a strong foundation, working long hours to "grow the crops" so you can reap what you grow is great; but, experience has taught me your company isn't taking you down that road. the company might become very successful. when that happens the investors will reap the rewards or fight each other over the gains until nothing is left. employees will not even be on their minds. unless something is on the books saying "drc7 gets -> this" drc7 will get 0.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
There is a book entitled _Death March_ that is a survival guide for situations like this, and also includes tips on talking to management about such situations.
There is no 'i' in team, but there is in fiasco...
60+ hour work weeks are quite common here in Silicon Valley. From the big names (HP, Apple, Google, Cisco) to the small companies. They hold their developers to tight deadlines and tell themselves that it's the employee/contractor that decides how many hours to work in order to meet the deadlines. All for pretty lousy set of options. Oh and contractors get royally screwed as it's quite common to pay for only 40 hours a week but expect said contractors to work off the clock for several more hours.
I used to think, 'oh it won't be the same at the next company' but every single one I've worked for as an employee or contractor have all had this mentality of work like a startup without the startup stock options. And the perks left the building a long time ago. Now it's about being grateful to have a job.
Have people left the valley in droves? The Whites did but were backfilled by the Indians in software and the Chinese in hardware. It's gotten to the point where I need to learn Hindi just to speak with my co-workers -- I'm not exaggerating at all since I'm literally the only white guy in an open cube area of 100+ developers and QA but that's another target.....
In short, no. I tend to run out of steam after about four or five hours, having to stay an extra three or four hours after the eight would just be a waste of time, piss me off and not get anything accomplished. Additionally, he's basically asking you to increase your work time by at least 25% for free. Nice try there, buddy. Assuming your boss is a reasonable human being (a little difficult to believe considering he even suggested this), you should be able to convince him that this is a horrible idea. Otherwise, start polishing your resume, it's time to jump ship.
We have the same situation in our office. We work 9 to 6, and just last year we had a financial crisis, and our boss suggested that we start work 9 AM to 9 PM. Our energy and productivity plummeted. We came up with a workable solution. The boss started supplying us with HGH which greatly improved our energy and productivity. There is always a solution to situations like this. Happily we found that this not only improved our productivity at work, but we still had energy to burn when we got home. Our company has improved financially, and our hours are back to normal but we are still taking HGH because it has so many other benefits.
Live Youthfully!
I have seen companies go out of business due to practices like this. If he wants to pay you to work 11 hour days, thats one thing, but expecting your salary to cover the extra time is BS. Even if he pays, you can't be expected to go at that pace for an extended period of time. If you were offered an ownership stake, then there would be an incentive to work that hard. As it is, if he implements that policy expect 80% of workers to walk.
There really isn't any reason to hang out at a company that is giving you Mandatory Unpaid Overtime (either as a mandate or through various forms of pressure).
You won't get any recognition for it, since by working mandatory unpaid overtime you are still just doing the minimum expected. When layoff's come, inevitably, you'll be plugged into the layoff formula which won't be taking your Mandatory Unpaid Overtime into account.
Lot's of MUO means the company will likely either have layoffs or close. You might not even get your last paycheck!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I did hundred-hour weeks for a couple of months to help ship a major AAA game. We did 10, 12 hours a day for 6 or 7 days a week for the last few months. However, the game turned out great, we all got decent bonuses, and we also got compensation time based on how much overtime we had worked. In my case the comp time worked out to an extra six weeks of paid vacation. The game turned out great and everyone was happy with the results, but we all realize that its not a sustainable long-term way to ship projects, and we're trying not to fall into that trap again.
You seem to equate being paid salary with more hours means working for free. You probably already know, but just because you're paid salary does not mean you can't be paid overtime. So if this looks like a move to get "free work" simply because you're salary, don't let that fly. It's likely illegal if that is the case, and if you do let it fly, then you are really causing detriment to the entire IT industry since if I balk at working for free, and you don't balk at working for free, it weakens my position.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
They're lying to you. Update your resume. That company is in a death spiral and you're better off getting out as soon as possible.
I've been there. Same situation- work till you drop for a promise (not in writing, of course) of some trinket-level reward - in this case, a $5000 bonus for working six months of 16 to 18-hour days (call it two full quarters of extra effort, 1000 hours. So it was $5 an hour actual pay rate, but that's not important).
We delivered. Management said "We never thought you'd do it, so we didn't budget for it and Marketing isn't ready to release it so no bonus."
So no bonus.
We should have expected better, since this was the same management that did an _inverse_ stock split, but only for employee-owned shares, except for the four employees who were founders, those guys shares didn't inverse-split. After it all shook out, my $40,000 worth of "signing bonus options" turned out to be worth $427. Funny how vulture capitalists only issue non-diluting shares when you are acting in a position of power.
Expect NOTHING in return from your bosses when you deliver, except possibly layoffs since you are no longer necessary, and will probably have major health problems so your medical bills will be costing them money on the group insurance policy.
I would say tell your employees exactly what was told here, and hope they have the sense to say FSCK YOU to your boss. "You want that? We want twenty percent of the company, NON DILUTING SHARES (i.e. if the company issues additional shares, even billions of shares, you still own 20% of the company. Shares that aren't non-diluting are worthless, see above note on turning $40,000 into $427.)."
In fact, don't even talk to anyone else. Just update your resume, circulate it, interview, do a professional job of task handoff, documentation, etc. and leave with a polite, professional note of two weeks notice.
I didn't realize there were private sector, salaried programmers out there that worked less than 10 hours a day. DREAM JOB!
The tech crowd sneers at unions and likes to think of itself as being way too cool/intelligent/independent to be part of a union ... but this is why they were created, and this is why they exist.
Don't you wish you had one right now?
If you have a union contract that puts limits on hours worked, or establishes compensation for overtime, then dickhead-the-boss can't make himself look good at your expense. He/she must actually manage the project intelligently to get work done, and must set realistic goals, and must work with you instead of dumping on you. It's much harder, which is why bosses don't like unions.
Unions suck in many ways, and are too often used to protect losers - but the tech crowd has been played for a sucker in swallowing the unions-are-never-good line. You're paying the price now.
You need to remind him that if you work your ass off, you see no benefit if the company sells a few extra units.
My experience is that people who are truly financially vested in their own small company often have a hard time understanding that their employees can find jobs elsewhere if the company goes under. They cannot see beyond their own situation.
If you truly like working there and want to keep working there, then you'll probably need to roll up your sleeves and do what you can to make sure the company stays afloat. If it's just a job to you, remind him that there have been class action lawsuits recently over expected un-paid overtime where the employees have "won" (EA ring a bell). If he wants you to work extra hours, then he needs to pony up with either paid over time or additional vacation. It may take some numbers on your end to make him see your side. Let's say you have a salary of $52,000 ($25 an hour). If he expects you to work an additional 10 hours for free, your rate just dropped to $20 an hour. That's a 25% reduction.
Personally, I have left the companies where this has happened to me. They kept looking for ways to get "free labor" out of us, and I wouldn't take it.
Absolutely! I will appreciate the 20-30% increase in company ownership equity that will come with the additional effort!
or
Absolutely! I will appreciate the 20-30% in additional salary for the next year for the additional effort!
or
Bye-Bye!
You don't work more for free, even for startups. His alternative is to hire 20-30% more staff, which will cost a LOT more than what you would be asking for.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
Here it is
Although I can sum up his advice in this case. If you can, leave. If you can't (you have a vested interest in this thing or need the money badly and can't let go) stay until you can leave. Then leave.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
>> What should I say to him when we talk about this again?"
Tell him he needs to ask not demand.
He also needs to not punish or otherwise discriminate against those who say "no" (imagine single parents etc).
He also needs to be prepared to reward people who do work long days commensurately. If he's like my boss, he won't realise that this means a lot more than just free pizza.
"It's a good way to have the best half of the workforce quit immediately and our resulting products made by overtired, overstressed deadwood. The company would then collapse into debt and ruin, and anyone who'd stayed on would be out on the street. So I guess the main question is - would I get a bonus?"
Well, you can't say that, but you *can* say he clearly has not done a cost/benefit analysis. For example,
- even in the middle of a depression, he would have people leaving as fast as they could find other jobs;
- it is a proven fact that there is a point of diminishing returns, that far better code
is written far faster after regular nights' sleep, rather than by half-asleep
zombies on too much caffeine
- has he budgeted anything for a) bonuses, b) comp time?
- has he considered the possibility that a union might try to come in?
- has he considered the possibility that one of the employees might file a federal labor
law lawsuit?
Finally, if he thinks that's what's necessary to get your product out the door, either the product is *very* badly specified, feature creep and/or spec revision is going on the way beer is
consumed at a frat house on Friday night, and that if all of this isn't reigned in this coming Monday morning, after a weekend spent replanning, prioritizing, and retargeting, AND THEN GETTING EMPLOYEE BUY-IN MONDAY, the company *will* fail.
Let me note that I base this on personal experience: 15 years ago, I worked for Ameritech, one of the Baby Bells (now swallowed by SBC, er, AT&T), and was in a start-up division that was going to be Ameritech's entry in the long distance sweepstakes. The first year, we had some incredibly good folks doing insane hours (the worst being the one young consultant who told me about the week he did, and I am not making this up, 119 hours (IN ONE WEEK!!!). By the second year, 4 teams had grown to 27. After about 2.5 years, and three quarters of a billion dollars, Ameritech shut down the division.
That *will* happen to y'all, if he pushes ahead.
mark
I've read the comments on here with some interest - I'm guessing almost all of them are from Americans. Why? Because something about American work culture seems to think that it's perfectly okay to work all day and all night.
Here in the UK, we sympathise quite a bit. We're far more American than our European counterparts, and even we would, generally, dislike anything more than 8 (or maybe 9) hour days. In France, Italy or Spain, this sort of proposal would result in the most extreme responses. You simply wouldn't even get to say the sentence without a very strong response from your staff.
I know many people look at (say) France and think it's a bit of a joke (commercially). Stories such as managers being taken hostage, and road blockades and the like don't help. But the French do "standard of living" really, really well. The French really respect the simple act of hanging out with each other. A lunch break less than an hour is an affront to many, because they want the opportunity to just "hang out". The suggestion that they may get home so late that their kids have already gone to bed is disgusting.
I'm not going to say which of the European and American approaches are better. However, you only get one life, and even though you may be young and single, and really just spending time in bars or whatever - that has a value, which cannot simply be substituted by money (or stock). When I was single, I valued my personal time much less than I do now, and honestly, that was a bit of a mistake. I should have been doing more with it, but at the time, instead of thinking for myself, I used work as a way of defining what I should do with my time. Now I'm married, and I can't put a price on a couple of hours just hanging out with my wife. If my employer wanted to take that away from me for more than a couple of weeks, I'd be thinking very seriously about the suitability of that employer. Whilst I understand the need to get things done for a deadline, no amount of money substitutes actual life experiences.
Lastly, if your boss is asking for more hours to get the company profitable, you need to figure out why. If your company is working, but not yet profitable, then can it not simply demonstrate this to an investor, and have that investor subsidise the company for a year or whatever? If the company can't convince investors to do this, why on earth would you want to do it? (That's essentially what you're being asked to do, after all). Is it in fact that the company is not working, and the product not selling, and the customers are not happy, and that the company will fail in a years time? If the latter, then no amount of extra hours is going to stop that happening.
OK, here's my view - The company is not profitable yet, so the chances that it is paying a high salary are not good. Your boss is asking salaried employees to work uncompensated overtime, routinely, 'until the company is profitable'. 1) The company being 'profitable' is a vague term - does he mean the first quarter that the company makes even $0.01 above costs? Or what? Does VC, etc, count toward income for 'profitability'? 2) He is not promising future compensation, just vaguely implying that hours will go back to normal after the company is profitable. Which could be years... 3) Even any vague implications about future compensation are just that - vague, and merely implications. Not bankable promises. 4) Even if the team is naive enough to agree to this, you can't bank on them remaining so. Go to the team and ask how they feel about working that extra time with no promises of any reward or compensation. If your staff are gun-ho enough about the company to be completely unfazed by the idea, then it's not a problem until apathy or exhaustion set in. Otherwise, the following points need to be raised. So I would tell your boss the following - 1) If he wants extra work from his people, he needs to be very careful not to abuse their generosity. He definitely needs to understand that generosity is exactly what this would be. 2) He needs to understand the impact this could have on retention - I would definitely expect an increase in turnover. 3) He needs to understand the impact on recruitment - people who can get a better deal elsewhere will not want to work there. 4) The impact on both of these would not end when the company became profitable - by then they could have a reputation. It's common practice to ask people at a company what it's like to work there, and this kind of thing is generally a mark against. 5) This will negatively impact the team's view of the company as well - quality may suffer not only from exhaustion, but apathy. Morale is not just "happy workers do better work" but "unhappy or angry workers may even be actually obstructionist". Keep in mind that employees (myself, for example) do not necessarily parse the difference between "what the company needs" and "what boss X wants" along the same lines as management. 6) Since they have no stock or ownership of the company, they have a very limited personal interest in whether the company does well - making it a situation where it's unpaid overtime or lose the job would indeed make me work the overtime... for just as long as it took me to find another job. He's asking them to make a personal sacrifice without a personal stake. So I would tell him that if all of those potential losses are worth the short-term gains of more rapid feature development, then this is feasible... but that the gains will rapidly drop off, and may not manifest as quickly as he would like given the resentment this is likely to cause, and may be entirely eliminated or even overtaken by any potential increase in turnover. I would also ask him what motivation he expects you to be able to provide to the team to do free work. If he's not willing to deal with the long-term (and short-term) consequences for the short-term gain, or he can't provide a satisfactory answer to the motivation question, then tell him it's not feasible, because you'd lose more than you'd gain, and he's going to have to pay actual money to increase output.
Sorry, I can't help myself...
Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?
Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.
Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
GC: A cup ' COLD tea.
EI: Without milk or sugar.
TG: OR tea!
MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.
EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."
EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!
MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
MP: Cardboard box?
TG: Aye.
MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
ALL: Nope, nope..
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I can code for many hours in the day but could I do my work for the whole day? I don't think so. The break from work as I go home, exercise, eat dinner and then move onto my own projects makes a difference. The fact the extra coding time is on my own projects makes it seem more fun and probably makes it easier to do. The fact my employers are hopeless means I'd probably slit my wrists before doing their stuff for 12+ hours.
I used to do it and built up thousands of extra £'s a year was nice but your life not revolving around work is nicer.
I learned a long, long time ago to avoid working for free. After years of putting in 12-18 hour days 6 days a week on salary, I realized that I had nothing to show for it, other than health issues (some of which still linger). Stock options aren't the same as money - they are more like lottery tickets. I worked for a lot of startups, none of which survived long enough for me to do anything with my stock options. I worked for large companies at various times, too, and never made a penny off the stock options.
If the company is struggling so much that the owner wants to tack on extra hours for no pay, I would think carefully about whether I really wanted to work there.
I work in a large open space without any separation between each desk. The developers are very close to each other. It's impossible to focus more than 5 minutes in a row. The only way to get something done is to arrive very early or leave very late.
In my opinion, open spaces are bad for productivity. We're not factory workers. We need calm and intimacy to solve complex problems.
Yeah. And if they don't like Newton's laws of motion, they can appeal to the Supreme Court.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
SSIA
strange world. some $oftware company does not want you to copy their program. but ... ...
they themselves depend on the fact that it is exactly that, making copies, which is what the computer
is good at
imagine software were a car, or shoes, or a table. man that would suck! you can't just "copy" a car!
crazy!
-
the best way to make programs, is to throw the idea "out there" and and see which mind will "compile" it.
if you force it (=hire someone) it will def. be slower to exist
Calls for uncompensated overtime are just for suckers. If you like the work and the salary just stick to 9 to 5 and see what happens. If you have kids, excuses are made out for you. If not, feel free to come up with good fiction. It's none of their business anyway.
- Cheap
- Quality
- Fast
You can only pick two; now exceptions.
If your boss doesn't care about morale and turnover, he needs to understand this in the least. He should care about morale and turnover. There are a number of posts above that make great points that I don't need to repeat and some that fit into the above rule.
If I were in that position, I would take that as a sign that it's time to find employment elsewhere.
"He read... that the best way to get new customers is to add new features"
Then spend some time (how about more than 10-11 hours) figuring out what new features to add with the least labor and do that first.
Someone is getting paid to figure out everyone should work more hours?
Tell your boss if you focus on hours then everyone will be focused on hours rather than the work. Focus on the work that needs to be done and by when and let the team figure out how to get there.
22 hour work-days, 7 day weeks, for 3.5 months. and I lucid-dreamt an 8-hour day when taking my 2-hour power naps (on occassion)
Took me 2-3 months serious R & R just to retool the stress-o-meter. And no, I really didn't have a choice in the
matter, it was work that *had to get done*.
you could burn yourself out so that a poorly planned and managed company can either profit or die, but for the sake of your health, don't do it.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
There are plenty of programmers offshore waiting for such an opportunity.
"He read something from Joel Spolsky that said the best way to get new customers is to add new features" Please provide citiation for this. Everything I've ever ready by Joel Spolsky has said the exact opposite.
Look, aside from most of the sarcastic and snide remarks here, if you believe strongly enough in a company and willing to put in the sacrifice then I would suggest you asking to make some kind of contract that will let you get compensated well after the initial period of sacrifice. Too often I have busted my ass for a company hoping to be recognized or receive good compensation only to get burned in the end. If the boss is asking for above and beyond the call of duty, then expect something in return. Obviously the company cannot afford to put more money up front, but how about asking for some profit share once the company is successful, or at least a pre-agreed upon pay raise when the company is deemed "profitable". Even during the initial sacrifice period, ask for a 3 day weekend every 2 weeks or bank up all your overtime so you can take a nice long holiday once the company is rolling. But get it in writing no matter how "nice" your boss is. Bottom line is when an exec or owner is face with "make more money", or "screw employees", it always tends to the latter.
If your boss expects you to bend over backwards to get the company profitable and then is going to offer nothing back in return, then its time to walk away. Remember, its YOUR time the company is asking to waste, unless you are learning new technologies or enhancing your career skills, expecting nothing in return just because the boss asks you to is not fair game at all.
The biggest thing to take from all this is that if your boss is going to be an ass and not work with you for fair compensation, then you are not going to want to work for him for long. If your boss is willing to offer fair compensation then you are working for someone to respect and a company you can enjoy to invest your time in.
Yes, young programmers fresh out of school can work 10 hour days. However, after a couple months of this it begins to take a toll, manifesting itself as illness. Also, I had a general rule of thumb that anything more than 12 hours in a single day is non-productive; the mistakes made after 12 hours outweigh any potential improvements made. In short, 10 or 11 hour days done in a sprint to meet a deadline is a valid business strategy; planning on working everyone 60 to 80 hour weeks for a whole year is not. While most programmers are capable of working 80 hour weeks for short bursts, these should be the exception, not the rule.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Read Don't Program on Fridays.
I don't know if there has been a similar study saying Don't Program After 8 Hours, it's a little harder to measure.
It was not invented to generate employee satisfaction, review the Steele Ingot Case Study by Galbrith, c.1910. Your team will last about 7, maybe 8 weeks; then it will begin to decay. Good luck, there's nothing like working for a company that will not be here in 18 months.