90 Hour Weeks?

Aswerty · 09-04-2014 2:17pm #1

So I've been following the 'Software Development - A Dead End Career?' thread and I see people referrring to younger devs willing to do 90 hour weeks. In a lot of other forums (albeit with a heavy American bias) there is also lots of references to developers having to put in very long hours (60 - 80). This seems to be especially true for the younger ones. I'm a developer in my mid 20's and to me the idea of doing that number of hours a week is beyond absurd. In my last company I ended up on a project for 5 weeks where I was doing 60 hours a week. I kicked up a stink at the start of the project since I thought what they expected was unrealistic and it was definitely one of the reasons why I left that employer. For that project if I broke down my hourly pay I was working for under minimum wage, and yes the wages were pretty terrible to begin with (it was my first role out of college).

In general I'll go beyond my contracted hours by working one or two weekday evenings if there is a need. Or under exceptional (and unavoidable) circumstances working a Saturday/Sunday wouldn't be out of the question but this would be only if a critical system was down or a critical deadline wouldn't be met. As far as I'm concerned this is sufficient to cover the clause in my contract that indicates that I can be asked to work beyond my standard hours if the company deems it neccessary.

What sort of hours/overtime do the rest of you deem acceptable? And have you worked in an environment where you had to put in long hours. If so, why did you do it? And would you do it again?

Sparks · 09-04-2014 2:27pm

Aswerty wrote: »

What sort of hours/overtime do the rest of you deem acceptable?

I don't really have a hard number for that. Most of mainland Europe seems to have 39 hours as a line in the sand, though that's an average over a period, not a cut-off like airline pilots have.

And have you worked in an environment where you had to put in long hours.

Yes, I've done the 90-hour week thing.

If so, why did you do it?

Deadlines for a major demo in a startup where I'd been promised equity and was the tech lead. So it was my design and a chunk of the company was mine (or so I thought at the time).

And would you do it again?

Immediately after the demo, the promise of equity went the way of all verbal contracts. More fool me, but the lesson was learned. Would I do it again? Would I ****. It's a stupid practice, caused by deadlines that people shouldn't have committed to in the first place, and it causes more problems than it solves.

Yes, there's the flexibility thing, if something catches fire putting it out is kindof the job description, but that's why the EU regs on working hours per week are based on an average over a period, there's more than enough wiggle room there.

srsly78 · 09-04-2014 2:36pm

This all falls under "working conditions" - renumeration and hours worked all comes into it. If working conditions are bad then people will quit. Most people have no problem working extra hours so long as they are being looked after.

But as Sparks has said, some employers are awful dicks. I have also had employers renege on their obligations, so I walked.

COYW · 09-04-2014 2:57pm

I have just over 8 years experience as a .Net developer and I can say that I have never put in an 80 hour week. I would refuse to do so and I wouldn't let any junior developer under me put in an 80 hour week. I have no problem putting in extra hours or working a weekend but 80 hours is unacceptable.

Trojan · 09-04-2014 3:13pm

I'm self-employed and often work very long weeks by regular folks standards. (Of course, I own 100% of the business).

I was just playing around looking at how many hours I did in what was a fairly extreme week for me recently: 72-74 hours. That was 12 hours each weekday, 8 and 4-6 hours on Saturday/Sunday respectively. I definitely could not sustain that effort for more than 2 weeks.

An 84 hour week is 12 hours per day for 7 days.

A 91 hour week is 13 hours per day for 7 days.

It is quite easy to do a 60 hour week (12 hours/day for 5 out of 7 days) and feel like you've worked a 90 hour week, but I think actual 90 hour weeks are quite rare.

Sparks · 09-04-2014 3:20pm

Trojan wrote: »

I think actual 90 hour weeks are quite rare.

I'd hope so. The last time I did one (that demo I mentioned), I was doing back-to-back stints of between 20 and 30 hours for about a calendar week. It was stupid, it was unpleasant, and I never want to go through that again.

Do I sound like I'm a little bitter about the entire experience? Rats, because I was trying to sound as bitter as a bag of old limes sucked through a tennis player's jockstrap.

I *really* think that practice is amongst the worst problems we have as an industry.

Trojan · 09-04-2014 3:28pm

One of my lecturers gave me this book a long time ago:

Essential reading for anyone in this kind of situation, and interesting for anyone in the technology business.

CreepingDeath · 09-04-2014 3:31pm

The 60-90 hour weeks are usually a sign of a start-up company or one chasing growth.
More mature software development companies will have proper estimates and project management.

There'll still be a few crisis where you have to put the extra effort in, but shouldn't have to do it on a regular basis.

It's been around 3 years since I had to work a weekend, again that was to save a project just before go-live.

A former CEO followed the "chasing the chasm" book on how to grow an I.T. business, and there was clear period in the companys growth were you sacrafice customer satisfaction for growth/market share. So things get very busy and chaotic in that growth period and it's usually developers fire-fighting the problems then.

Evil Phil · 09-04-2014 5:43pm

I've worked 60 hours weeks, on one contract I did actually work 90 hour weeks. We were getting paid overtime but everyone burnt out in a month, people left including myself.

I don't have the citations but the reason we work a 40 hour week is because research has shown that any longer than that and employees are actually less productive. I have limited myself to a 10 hour day maximum (9am - 7pm for example) but even with that the follow day I'm noticeably less capable, so I try to avoid it.

It seems to be a badge of honour in development, and elsewhere, to be working crazy hours. It's pointless, I guess in the startup environment this happens, and some people thrive on it, but even then they'll burn out. Being self-employed is a different thing because you've a much greater investment in the work.

Aswerty · 09-04-2014 6:23pm

Sparks wrote: »

I'd hope so. The last time I did one (that demo I mentioned), I was doing back-to-back stints of between 20 and 30 hours for about a calendar week. It was stupid, it was unpleasant, and I never want to go through that again.

Do I sound like I'm a little bitter about the entire experience? Rats, because I was trying to sound as bitter as a bag of old limes sucked through a tennis player's jockstrap.

I *really* think that practice is amongst the worst problems we have as an industry.

I can appreciate the bitterness. When I did the few 60 hour weeks on the trot as I metioned in my first post, I was fairly bitter towards my employer. It wasn't so much the extra work that made me bitter but more the fact that they were happy to put me in a situation where I pretty much had the choice of agreeing to be put under a huge amount of pressure or put in my notice there and then. And I can tell you it came close to putting in my notice on the spot. The initial meeting for that project was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my professional life.

I think the term Deathmarch would have described the project pretty well. It isn't working the long hours that made it so tough it was the constant pressure, juggling of important tasks, and the dread of hitting unforseen problems I had no time to deal with.

Call Me Jimmy · 09-04-2014 6:34pm

A very interesting discussion as I have seen the attitude of some people (not directly) where it is a badge of honor to be willing to or to have done these hours.

I would doubt their prevalence; as phil said, most employers know that though someone may be there working for 90 hours, you are not getting 90 hours of maximised productivity.

In cases of 'crunch time' if I had a large stake in the product I would do it as it would have been, partially at least, my responsibility for the time management/mismanagement.

It is a matter of principle that I wouldn't do it as an employee where the necessity for the crazy hours is based on the mistakes and failures of management/team leaders to correct things earlier.

Sparks · 09-04-2014 6:51pm

The harder we crowd business for time, the more efficient it becomes. The more well-paid leisure workmen get, the greater become their wants. These wants soon become needs. Well-managed business pays high wages and sells at low prices. Its workmen have the leisure to enjoy life and the wherewithal with which to finance that enjoyment.

The industry of this country could not long exist if factories generally went back to the ten hour day, because the people would not have the time to consume the goods produced.

Just as the eight hour day opened our way to prosperity, so the five day week will open our way to a still greater prosperity.

In the old days, before we had management and power, a man had to work through a long day in order to get a bare living. Now the long day would retard both production and consumption.

It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either 'lost time' or a class privilege.

The five day week is not the ultimate, and neither is the eight hour day. It is enough to manage what we are equipped to manage and to let the future take care of itself. It will anyway. That is its habit. But probably the next move will be in the direction of shortening the day rather than the week.

That long-forgotten pinko commie hippie was the highly unsuccessful businessman Henry Ford, who introduced both the 8-hour day and the 5-day week, speaking in October 1926. You'd imagine we'd have moved forward since then, wouldn't you? (And we may well need to, as Charles Stross was writing about recently).

COYW · 09-04-2014 6:53pm

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

A very interesting discussion as I have seen the attitude of some people (not directly) where it is a badge of honor to be willing to or to have done these hours.

Some consider it a "rite of passage" for graduates. I really don't understand what it proves myself. The consultancy firms pride themselves on it. You get these grads who are trying to learn about the industry, after their week long crash course in Java, .Net or whatever and they are too tired to learn after working these silly shifts.

Call Me Jimmy · 09-04-2014 6:59pm

It doesn't apply as much too exclusively physical intensive work, but for a software developer, who is ONLY really living in thought processes all day, the work day should not be 8.5/9 hours. It's my opinion that that is wasteful because the day ends up being as long as any other work day but the brain just can't concentrate on abstractions and concepts for an hour on end, there will be a lot of waste in that hour and the waste-to-productive ratio goes up as each hour passes. I think 5 hours max should be the work day of a developer.

Lemming · 09-04-2014 7:05pm

COYW wrote: »

I have just over 8 years experience as a .Net developer and I can say that I have never put in an 80 hour week. I would refuse to do so and I wouldn't let any junior developer under me put in an 80 hour week. I have no problem putting in extra hours or working a weekend but 80 hours is unacceptable.

+1 on that.

I've done stupid hour weeks, "13/14/15/whatever-number of day" etc. where I've just stopped counting so don't remember. In most cases it's the sign of something very, very wrong at a fundamental level that is beyond simply throwing dev resources at a problem until/upon you start getting diminishing returns. It also usually results in lots of very stupid & costly mistakes - that could otherwise be easily avoided - because the devs are so overworked/over-pressured/tired and burning out that concentration lapses.

Royale with Cheese · 09-04-2014 7:06pm

I did 60 odd hour weeks for a period of about 2 months once for one of the bigger tech companies in Dublin that are notorious for long hours. At the time you sort of get into a groove and it becomes natural, the thought of doing it again though makes me want to poke my eyes out. We did a smaller release after that went in with more normal hours but motivation was at a low after that. Also I definitely felt I had a sense of entitlement to put my feet up a little, which is far from healthy as the job wasn't done yet.

That said we got paid an hourly rate for overtime unlike a lot of smaller companies, and since I hadn't been working in Ireland for a few months that year I had built up a load of tax credits. I ended up earning a fair chunk of cash from doing it.

Lemming · 09-04-2014 7:10pm

If you're being paid big money because your employers are trying to pull the rabbit out of a burning hat, the rewards can be very good. But it's not sustainable. Like you said Royale, the thought of doing it over is not thrilling.

Joe Doe · 09-04-2014 7:21pm

Agree 5hrs am with optional 3hrs evening (remote) for Deve is the perfect scenario. Human/mammal sleep cycles historically show a days sleep should consist of two separate periods (hence siestas etc) this was only changed since the industrial revolution began in N'Europe in increase productivity. To make matters worse caffeine is drip-fed, to maintain alertness yet it reduces alpha brain waves thus reducing complex creative though proceeses.

Once did a 22hr shift (in the old days of pre-press publishing), but it was only x1 per month and normal practice to secure good pre-flight and handover, so not too bad.

Another time witnessed people faint/walk into doors during an all weekender in London. Mostly we were all ltd contractors placements (employers prefer this) so no real legal remit to working conditions. Pulled out early after realising the company was at pre-crash, and they wouldn't sign my own basic but watertight freelance 1pg contract and needless to say was the only person out of 15 that even got paid (80% anyway), thanks to calling in a heavy factoring company and using earlier verbal/email communicaitons. The recruitment agency provided no help whatsoever, their own 20pg contracts were worthless and even called me couple of weeks later to ask for advice on how they could help secure pay for their other unpaid placements!

Overtime is quite simply a result of poor management-scheduling/forecasting/planning/asset acquisition. Bad practitioners also quickly get found out these days particularly by the more experienced workers.

Giblet · 09-04-2014 8:05pm

It's a good way to burn out a good developer. I've worked 60 hours, but any more and I'd probably just let the project fail, as it should.

conor.hogan.2 · 09-04-2014 10:25pm

90 hours for any period of time is beyond ridiculous if you are on a contract and you are being paid to work 35-37.5 on average then you are working a second job for free essentially with none of the "benefits" of that.

The Corinthian · 10-04-2014 8:35am

First of all, when you see people post about "90 hour weeks", I wouldn't take it too literally. What's being referred to is excessive overtime as standard, which is all too common in IT.

That's not to say that the 90 hour week doesn't happen - I've done it and I suspect most who've been in the business for over five years have had that experience at least once in their career. It was naturally a case of an unrealistic deadline, where to keep us at our desks pizzas would be shipped in every day (eating nothing but pizza is not good for you after a while) and where even the PM eventually had a mental break (we found her one morning outside of the building crying and refusing to come in) and so we ended up having to PM ourselves (it was an improvement, TBH).

I distinctly remember, at the end of a 19 hour day, reaching a point where I could no longer focus and it took me 40 minutes to write a single line of code, thinking that was it for the day. I lived ten minutes away, so I got home, slept fully clothed and ended up back at my desk the next day at nine to start another 16+ hour day.

However, such extreme cases are the exception rather than the rule, as they are physically unsustainable. What is more common is where you are pressured into working every day until 9pm, work through your lunch and also come in for at least one day on weekends - effectively a 60 to 70 hour week. And the thing is that when this becomes the expected standard, people don't even realize they're doing it, because everyone else is.

This is far more commonplace, especially in consultancies and particularly in the more 'prestigious' firms, and in the context of the other thread what you find is that older, more experienced, developers will be far less likely to work these hours and more likely to leave at 17:30 - 18:00, on the dot, because after a few years they realize that this is ultimately exploitation (often driven by unrealistic targets, cost cutting or incompetent planning) and that were they to do these hours they would, as someone already pointed out, be earning less than the minimum wage per hour.

One of the reasons that more senior developers can do this is ultimately they don't need the job - that it, this isn't your first job and even if it is a prestigious company, it won't be your first, so you can afford to move on. Young developers can't fall back on the other places they've worked on their CV if they choose to move on, especially if they're moving on with less than a year or two of commercial experience.

My view is that sometimes you do have to pull all the stops for the greater good. If it's because someone else screwed up, then you can deal with that in the post-mortem. But when it starts becoming the standard, when de facto your working week becomes 50, 60 or 70 hours per week, rather than 40, then it's time to reassess if you want to stay.

But if you're a graduate developer and you find yourself in such a role, then you're kind of stuck and that's where it becomes a rite of passage.

jester77 · 10-04-2014 9:38am

I haven't worked more than 45 hours in at least 7-8 years. Long hours are a symptom of bad management, planning and estimating. Sprints are usually 2-3 weeks, it is not too difficult to estimate 2-3 weeks worth of development work. There are daily standups to weed out problems quickly. If the team end up doing 50+ hour weeks then something is seriously wrong.

Call Me Jimmy · 10-04-2014 1:18pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

First of all, when you see people post about "90 hour weeks", I wouldn't take it too literally. What's being referred to is excessive overtime as standard, which is all too common in IT.

That's not to say that the 90 hour week doesn't happen - I've done it and I suspect most who've been in the business for over five years have had that experience at least once in their career. It was naturally a case of an unrealistic deadline, where to keep us at our desks pizzas would be shipped in every day (eating nothing but pizza is not good for you after a while) and where even the PM eventually had a mental break (we found her one morning outside of the building crying and refusing to come in) and so we ended up having to PM ourselves (it was an improvement, TBH).

I distinctly remember, at the end of a 19 hour day, reaching a point where I could no longer focus and it took me 40 minutes to write a single line of code, thinking that was it for the day. I lived ten minutes away, so I got home, slept fully clothed and ended up back at my desk the next day at nine to start another 16+ hour day.

However, such extreme cases are the exception rather than the rule, as they are physically unsustainable. What is more common is where you are pressured into working every day until 9pm, work through your lunch and also come in for at least one day on weekends - effectively a 60 to 70 hour week. And the thing is that when this becomes the expected standard, people don't even realize they're doing it, because everyone else is.

This is far more commonplace, especially in consultancies and particularly in the more 'prestigious' firms, and in the context of the other thread what you find is that older, more experienced, developers will be far less likely to work these hours and more likely to leave at 17:30 - 18:00, on the dot, because after a few years they realize that this is ultimately exploitation (often driven by unrealistic targets, cost cutting or incompetent planning) and that were they to do these hours they would, as someone already pointed out, be earning less than the minimum wage per hour.

One of the reasons that more senior developers can do this is ultimately they don't need the job - that it, this isn't your first job and even if it is a prestigious company, it won't be your first, so you can afford to move on. Young developers can't fall back on the other places they've worked on their CV if they choose to move on, especially if they're moving on with less than a year or two of commercial experience.

My view is that sometimes you do have to pull all the stops for the greater good. If it's because someone else screwed up, then you can deal with that in the post-mortem. But when it starts becoming the standard, when de facto your working week becomes 50, 60 or 70 hours per week, rather than 40, then it's time to reassess if you want to stay.

But if you're a graduate developer and you find yourself in such a role, then you're kind of stuck and that's where it becomes a rite of passage.

Pretty much agree with everything except the last line. I understand what you're saying, but I would be confident as a graduate developer that I would leave such a consistently exploitative role and look elsewhere even without the experience. I don't like the idea of anyone feeling they are trapped in a role. A good developer will get hired again. A smart company would accept and agree with a developer who left for these reasons imo.

I know it sounds very idyllic and luxurious, but I think *possibly*, based on all the literature and fascination in IT with software processes etc. management now are beginning to cop on to the bigger picture.

The Corinthian · 10-04-2014 4:15pm

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

Pretty much agree with everything except the last line. I understand what you're saying, but I would be confident as a graduate developer that I would leave such a consistently exploitative role and look elsewhere even without the experience.

Fair enough, but not everyone would share your confidence. After all, landing your first job in IT, without commercial experience, isn't the easiest thing in the World - college courses are oblivious to commercial realities and thus don't teach them and without it graduate developers tend to need an inordinate amount of monitoring for their first six months.

I don't like the idea of anyone feeling they are trapped in a role. A good developer will get hired again. A smart company would accept and agree with a developer who left for these reasons imo.

If they're telling the truth (People Lie in Interviews Shocker!). I've been told this story more than once in interviews, only to discover that in reality they jumped, or were pushed, from their first/last job because they were basically crap. Or flakes. Or even had mental health issues (I kid you not).

I know it sounds very idyllic and luxurious, but I think *possibly*, based on all the literature and fascination in IT with software processes etc. management now are beginning to cop on to the bigger picture.

By all means stick by your ideals. All I'd say is you are taking a risk, and like all risks it can pay off or blow up in your face.

BrokenArrows · 10-04-2014 5:29pm

My contract is for 39.5 hours a week. Ill occasionally put in an extra hour if i'm in the zone come 5.30 and im enjoying the project but as a rule ill leave on time.

My company is terrible at promising the impossible so I learned a long time ago to just do my hours.

I've been occasionally asked to do a Saturday if we are under pressure but that's always with the understanding that ill take another day off at some point.

I think some junior devs can feel pressured into putting in huge hours because they may not be experienced enough to see that the reason that they are behind schedule is because the schedule was unrealistic.

Manach · 10-04-2014 5:47pm

A lot of it is scheduling problems, where the times do look realistic on Gannt charts but life and coding are never that simple. I've on occasion done the 60hr work week, but that got rarer as I learned to give realistic feedback on expectations and had the documentation to back this up.
However it is not only small/emerging firms that have this culture. The last major project I was in a large firm, it switched to wind down mode and staff were still moved onto other projects and the core team were expected to multi-task development efforts at the same level with a minimum of people employed - ie wearing different hats (DBA, Sysadmin, Scripting etc, Customer T1/T2/T3 support etc) to get the last of the legacy code in support mode. That dragged on ever so slightly.

Sparks · 10-04-2014 6:34pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

college courses are oblivious to commercial realities and thus don't teach them

Yeah, that's not actually true. At least not in good courses. Not because they teach them; but because they're not oblivious to them, they deliberately ignore them because commercial requirements are bull**** as far as things-to-base-your-syllabus-on go for undergraduate courses (if you're offering an industrial course on tool X, that's another thing entirely).
You want to run an undergrad course in CS/CENG as a general course, not some industrial prep thing because by the time your first graduate's emerged from four years of work, commercial requirements can have changed utterly. If my course had used commercial requirements as a basis, I'd have emerged knowing how to make WAP pages and code in Delphi. Instead, I learn how stuff works from the IDE down to the silicon and I've learnt every new trend since in days or weeks.

All I'd say is you are taking a risk, and like all risks it can pay off or blow up in your face.

This is true; but it's equally true that nothing in life is safe and risk-free. If the "safe" option involves 60+ hours a week for entry-level wages, I'd take the risk.

ChRoMe · 10-04-2014 10:42pm

Sparks wrote: »

Yeah, that's not actually true. At least not in good courses. Not because they teach them; but because they're not oblivious to them, they deliberately ignore them because commercial requirements are bull**** as far as things-to-base-your-syllabus-on go for undergraduate courses (if you're offering an industrial course on tool X, that's another thing entirely).
You want to run an undergrad course in CS/CENG as a general course, not some industrial prep thing because by the time your first graduate's emerged from four years of work, commercial requirements can have changed utterly. If my course had used commercial requirements as a basis, I'd have emerged knowing how to make WAP pages and code in Delphi. Instead, I learn how stuff works from the IDE down to the silicon and I've learnt every new trend since in days or weeks.

This is true; but it's equally true that nothing in life is safe and risk-free. If the "safe" option involves 60+ hours a week for entry-level wages, I'd take the risk.

Still wouldn't ****ing hurt for a uni to even introduce the concept of source control though.

Sparks · 10-04-2014 11:40pm

ChRoMe wrote: »

Still wouldn't ****ing hurt for a uni to even introduce the concept of source control though.

The courses I taught did...

Granted, the courses I took didn't, but to be fair, at the time RCS was the norm (and I still have projects from back then in RCS archives so it's not like it was a secret tool), CVS was still experimental really (and without the web, it hadn't spread as far as us - Navigator was only released half-way through my first year in college and we didn't think it was going to be able to compete with gopher except on the iMacs and they weren't real computers

), and if you needed source control for a 40-line program, then really you'd get better results by spending a little time learning to touch-type (120wpm on my off days thanks to the nuns, bee-atch)...

The Corinthian · 11-04-2014 9:11am

Sparks wrote: »

Yeah, that's not actually true. At least not in good courses.

I can't speak for every course out there, but I have seen the common end result, which is a developer who can be very talented and knowledgeable on an academic level, but still needs a lot of hand-holding in a commercial environment for the first few months.

If my course had used commercial requirements as a basis, I'd have emerged knowing how to make WAP pages and code in Delphi.

Not really what I'm talking about, although about fifteen years ago many courses were still teaching CGI-Perl when the industry had long since moved onto frameworks/languages such as ASP and PHP*. By commercial, I don't even mean source control, but even basic stuff like unit testing, or what a staging environment was.

This is true; but it's equally true that nothing in life is safe and risk-free. If the "safe" option involves 60+ hours a week for entry-level wages, I'd take the risk.

Absolutely, all I've said is that not everyone will take the risk and will instead suck it up in their first job.

That risk also really depends on the market; I entered the market during the Dotcom period, so I could afford to move around; I managed to move twice (one day in the first job, a month in the second) before I was in a role I was comfortable with. But that was a boom period for IT and getting a job was easy.

Had I entered the market in 2002, there's no way I would have been able to do that and I would probably have had difficulty getting that first job to begin with.

* Not to say they shouldn't; modern Web languages are so high-level that good old fashioned Perl-CGI is far more instructive. The point is that this was the most modern Web language they were teaching.

MajesticDonkey · 11-04-2014 9:47am

The Corinthian wrote: »

I can't speak for every course out there, but I have seen the common end result, which is a developer who can be very talented and knowledgeable on an academic level, but still needs a lot of hand-holding in a commercial environment for the first few months.

As a student currently over 3 months (out of 8) into work placement as a developer/server administrator I can vouch for this statement. I can't say for other courses, but my course really didn't give me any insight to working in a commercial environment, as mentioned. The sheer fact that breaking something can affect thousands of users is terrifying!

90 Hour Weeks?

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