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Are 10-11 Hour Programming Days Feasible?

Posted by timothy on from the what-share-of-the-company-is-he-offering? dept.

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?"

22 of 997 comments (clear)

  1. Bye-bye! by vrmlguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'Nuff said!

    --
    Nothing for 6-digit uids?
    1. Re:Bye-bye! by linear+a · · Score: 5, Funny

      If he wants you to cut back on programming hours then that's his choice.

    2. Re:Bye-bye! by DragonWriter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well rested and happy people are far more productive than tired and unhappy people.

      This is certainly true if you measure productivity in value of output per unit of time worked. OTOH, if you have exempt employees, your labor costs don't scale with hours worked, and you may, within a certain range, get more output per unit of labor cost by expanding hours past the point where that would be beneficial in a system of hourly wages.

      On the third(?!) hand, there is going to be a point at which that becomes counterproductive, even in the short-term, and in the long-term it probably isn't good for morale and retention.

      A successful focus would be on motivation and efficiency, not on length of workday.

      But a boss can't just declare motivation and efficiency, whereas a boss can just declare longer workdays. "Motivation and efficiency" require the boss to do work...

    3. Re:Bye-bye! by jrumney · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is certainly true if you measure productivity in value of output per unit of time worked. OTOH, if you have exempt employees, your labor costs don't scale with hours worked, and you may, within a certain range, get more output per unit of labor cost by expanding hours past the point where that would be beneficial in a system of hourly wages.

      Indeed. Studies have shown that the peak point for knowledge workers is something like 7.5 hours a day, 4 days a week, so going up from the standard 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (which we have Henry Ford to thank for - he carefully researched the optimum working time for assembly line workers) is already giving you diminishing returns.

    4. Re:Bye-bye! by losfromla · · Score: 5, Funny

      citation please. I do agree and want to believe but laziness prevent me googling and filtering

      --
      Only I can judge you.
    5. Re:Bye-bye! by Surt · · Score: 5, Informative

      The third hand is traditionally referred to as 'the gripping hand' in nerd circles.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    6. Re:Bye-bye! by floop · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The ford motor company set a 48 hour, 6 day work week because, as Henry Ford said himself, for social justice reasons but it was really to reduce an extremely high turnover rate. This wasn't the whole picture in practice though. http://books.google.com/books?id=4K82efXzn10C&pg=PA126#v=onepage&q&f=false He didn't invent the assembly line either. Ford Motors wasn't even the first to use it for auto manufacturing. Ford is not a hero. He was a CEO.

    7. Re:Bye-bye! by WaywardGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've worked for a bunch of startups, though no Google or such that I no longer need to work. There are all kinds of people out there, and you need to be very careful not to get screwed. It's amazing still to me how rational likable people can turn into true horrors when money is involved.

      So, here's what I recommend based on the very small amount of data presented. First, tell your employees that you have been asked to ask if they will work 10-11 hours per day until profitable without any stock or additional compensation. Be sure to mention the words stock and additional compensation. They will naturally, unless they are seriously whipped employees, say they would like to have either stock or more cash, but they're probably happy to work their hearts out if treated fairly. If you and your employees believe the company has a decent chance at a good future, go back to your boss and tell him the employees want stock, and that you feel it might be a good idea, and that you think you could run the team hard for a while if they all thought it was in their best interest. Also mention that if they own stock, they'll all want to work harder, even after they are profitable.

      Unless your boss is a complete dick (which is actually quite common), he'll find a way to get your guys stock. Be sure to ask how many outstanding shares there are, and be prepared for the possibility that he lies about the answer. Don't be a sucker. Try to double check the number by mentioning it to another investor, board member, the CFO, or someone else who knows the truth, and judge their reaction. Do a quick estimate of the current value of the company, and figure out how many shares per hour you could by with the cash that those hours are worth. Maybe be nice and work for a discount, but don't get totally screwed.

      Unfortunately, I see way too much of two kinds of people in startups. There are way too many dishonest owners and bosses who will take advantage of trusting geeks. After all, our skills are all engineering and software, not negotiation and conflict. On the other hand, there are way too many gullible geeks, and geeks who like so many beaten house wives are simply unable to grow a pair and stand up for themselves. Assuming you care about your employees, it's probably up to you to stand up for them.

      Then, there's the standard compromise, which I hope you will avoid. It is very common in these situations for your boss to offer you personally a fair stock deal, so long as you can sell a crap deal to your employees. The standard way this is done is for you to be asked to claim each share is worth X, when in reality it's worth less than X/10. The way to help your employees in this case is to somehow leak how much stock is outstanding. If your employees are too dumb to guess what the stock is actually worth once they have this information, they may not deserve extra compensation. The fact that you're posting here may mean you actually care about your employees. I hope you do, and can stick up for them.

      Finally, if your boss is one of those fairly common jerks who will absolutely refuse to get you stock now, but goes on and on about how much money he's going to pay you once their profitable, then consider moving to a new company. I have never in all my years in industry seen any such promise fulfilled.

      I'll end with a story where I got screwed for not growing a pair. Back in 1999, I was doing some consulting for Zvi OrBach, founder of eASIC. He'd promised me 2% of his stock for access to all my source code, and he promised to keep the code confidential, etc. I delivered the code, and the next day he sent it to Romania, where of course nothing is confidential. I asked for stock certificates, and he gave all sorts of BS reasons he couldn't do it right away, but if I'd wait a reasonable period of time, he'd make it happen. He sent me to Romania to train the team to use my software, and you know what he asked me to do? He asked me to tell them to work extra hours without pay, and he told me

      --
      Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
    8. Re:Bye-bye! by kinabrew · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What *will* happen is that those who can get better jobs(the best workers) will, and the people who will be left will be the worst and least-qualified workers.

      If the management are thinking up brilliant ideas like this, it would be a good idea to get your résumé to as many other potential employers as possible.

    9. Re:Bye-bye! by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's a nice story, but the fact remains that working programmers 10 hours a day for more than a couple of weeks max (for a particularly nasty deadline, for example) is just plain counterproductive. There are many years of stastistics to back that up. I don't have them right at hand, but I am sure someone here does.

      The statement that a happy and relaxed development team is more productive is still true.

    10. Re:Bye-bye! by justin12345 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That was my exact thought as well. Most companies fail. In this guy's case they are just salaried employees without stock, they don't even have a vested interest in the company succeeding. Asking programmers (or anyone for that matter) to work 11 hours a day just to keep their job is just a good way to get rid of your employees.

      Also, as far as actual productivity goes: in my experience 6 hours of actual work is pushing it for a programmer. Sure they show up for a full day, but after a certain point the brain burns out and they're posting on slashdot instead of coding, or they are making a lot of mistakes.

      There is a reason that a lot of start ups spent a lot of money on game rooms and making their employees happy and comfortable. I'd rather have 4 good hours of a programmer at his absolute best then 8 hours of mediocrity.

      --
      Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
    11. Re:Bye-bye! by sconeu · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too...

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    12. Re:Bye-bye! by syousef · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Boss is asking his opinion, ergo boss apparently cares enough to not just slam people over the head with his authority-stick. I could think of far worse people to work for. OP should be explaining to him the downsides of the plan, and perhaps suggesting better ways of achieving the desired goal - not pulling the pin and fucking off at the high-port.

      No, the boss is a manager of people but does not understand that working them into the ground for a sustained period isn't going to save the company. He is either desperate or stupid or both. In any case a manager of software developers that does not know the answer to this question is an amateur at best and has no business running a company.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    13. Re:Bye-bye! by c6gunner · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'll take an amateur who's willing to learn over a "professional" who thinks he's infallible, any day.

    14. Re:Bye-bye! by byte+twine · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, and willingly gave his workers health benefits so he could sell more ambulances...

      Oh, right, he did none of those things. You were born to a 40 hour work week because generations of workers fought for it. They fought for Sunday off, they fought for the 10-hour workday, and they fought for the 40 hour work week. Thank the workers who organized and fought in unions and gained this victory. Celebrate it and remember the struggle on May Day.

  2. Don't Say Anything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Start your job hunt now.

  3. they suck and you will get burned out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:they suck and you will get burned out by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It really depends on the individual programmer.

      This is always a worthwhile note.

      I headed up a small group 4 developers. The boss, at one point, came over and noted we'd all been working our asses off and wanted to offer up a token of appreciation. I said, "I don't know. Let's find out what people would like." He didn't like the idea--he was concerned that there would be some infighting if somebody got something that was "worth more" than what someone else got. I told him, "These are all individuals who've put their individual lives on hold to get this done. They're going to want different things."

      2 guys took cash. 1 guy got a very fancy new computer. And 1 guy said, "Give me an extra two weeks of vacation and let me take a month off."

      My advice, in this case, would be to sit down with the people in question and see what they would like in return for 50 hour weeks and how they would like to try to do this. Would they rather do 10 hour days 5 days a week? Would they rather do 8 hour days 6 days a week? Would they like to see more in their paycheck? Would they prefer a bonus for milestones? Shares in the company? Dinners? Try to get some ideas of what people would want and take those back to the boss. Negotiate for your people and see what can be arranged.

  4. too vague of a timeline by anjilslaire · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "until the company is profitable" is way too vague to work like that.

    --
    Need more useless stuff to read on teh internetz?
  5. Yes they are feasible. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. Just Read This by TexVex · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    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:

    In most times, places, and industries over the past century, managers who worked their employees this way would have been tagged as incompetent -- not just because of the threat they pose to good worker relations, but also because of the risk their mismanagement poses to the company's productivity and assets. A hundred years of industrial research has proven beyond question that exhausted workers create errors that blow schedules, destroy equipment, create cost overruns, erode product quality, and threaten the bottom line.

    --
    Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
  7. I did the 80 hour work week by Aronacus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.