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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.
Start your job hunt now.
I'd take a reduction in hours anyday.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
You don't want ownership stake in a non-profitable company that has to make its employees work absurd hours to become profitable.
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).
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
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.
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.
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
Masochist-Texas
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.
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.
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.)
MySpace had their employees working like this back about October, and look where they are now!
or better yet move people into a 4/10 schedule. When I program and get into a groove I'm very productive until I'm taken out of that groove. A longer work day would extend that groove, but compensate with a 4/10 so you do not become overworked
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.
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.
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.
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.
Indeed.
"canceling all non-stand-up meetings for the foreseeable future.
Ah, yes...the standup meetings. Somebody at my old job heard that buzzword a few years ago. Nothing like standing up for 3 hours listening to report after report that has to do with you only in the 3rd degree of separation.
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
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.
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.
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.
>>or better yet move people into a 4/10 schedule. When I program and get into a groove I'm very productive until I'm taken out of that groove. A longer work day would extend that groove, but compensate with a 4/10 so you do not become overworked
This.
The single most important thing for programmer productivity is the ability to promote things that get them into the groove (headphones + music) and eliminating things that get them out of the groove (meetings, distractions). I've worked 4x10s (and on a swing shift too, to match my sleep cycle), and that was my most productive time when I worked in an office.
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
Oh.... that's in DECIMAL?
Sorry, carry on.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
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.
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%.
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."
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."
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.
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
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."
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'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
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?
Better yet, offer him four twenty dollar notes and ask him if he will give you a hundred dollar note for them. If he says yes, tell him you won't work for someone that doesn't understand money - and leave. If he says no, ask him why he expects you to make the equivalent deal for him - and leave.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 -
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.
Measuring productivity in lines of code is as stupid as measuring health by how much a surgeon cuts.
"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?
things like this are illegal in Norway!
This is blinging
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."
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
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.