One of the things that pretty much every developer has had to face at least once in his career is the issue of working overtime (typically, to meet a deadline). If you're lucky (or smart), this is a rare occasion. For some however, this is either a habit, or happens frequently. There are actually quite a few developers who are proud of being able to do 60-80 hours a week. And they could not be more wrong.
There's nothing wrong with putting in a few extra hours occasionally. Sometimes, it just needs to be done. But, as soon as it is required more than occasionally (and with occasionally, i mean every couple of months), something is wrong. First of all, you're not gonna produce anything good if you're doing a lot of overtime. At first, it starts with a couple of late nights. The first couple of nights, the work you do is still 'good enough'. It's not gonna be great, but hey, it'll do. After a couple of nights though, if you're still doing a lot of extra hours, there's gonna be a noticeable negative effect on the work you're doing. And you know what the worst part is? You, of all people, won't notice it. You're working hard, you're trying to catch up with the schedule, and you're doing the best you can. Or at least, you think you are.
In reality, you are hurting yourself, the project and your teammates more than you could imagine at that time. Here's the deal: there's a reason why most people are working 8 hours a day on average. If you routinely work more than 8 hours a day, your work is going to suffer from it (it depends on the job obviously, but for software developers, i'd argue that this is definitely the case). If you do a bit of overtime occasionally, then you, nor the project will suffer from it. It'll just take a little bit more out of you than what you're used to. But once it becomes a routine, you, as a human being, will start performing worse and worse as time goes on. Inevitably, that deterioration will become very noticeable in your work. And here's the sad thing: you're putting in the extra effort to catch up with the schedule. But by doing so, you're actually performing worse and you're hurting the schedule. Here's what happens: you spend a few late nights at the office. At first, things go ok. You're getting things done and it appears to be working. You keep spending late nights at the office. After a few days (really, it happens that fast), the quality of your work starts deteriorating. And you won't notice it until you get back the next day. So then what happens? You start cleaning up the mess you made the night before. Which only means you're getting even more behind schedule. So then you'll need even more time to catch up with the schedule. But you're already spending this much extra time at work, and the problem only seems to get worse! Well, yeah... that's the whole point that i'm trying to make here. You know what's the best thing you could possibly do in those situations? Go home at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, go have some fun, relax, and get a good night's sleep. You won't believe how much more productive you'll be the next day.
But where is this need to do overtime coming from? I'd argue that, in the large majority of cases, this is due to management mistakes. Either the wrong things were promised to the customer, or your management doesn't have a clue of what is really going on. So, if you find yourself in a position where you routinely need to do overtime, you really need to start asking yourself whether or not you're working for the right company. If you routinely need to do overtime to reach a deadline, that tells you that the project management (and highly likely, every kind of management beyond that) is pretty messed up. I don't know about you, but i really don't want to work for people who don't know what they're doing. If you're doing a lot of overtime, your management is either clueless or stupid. Probably a combination of both.
As for the developers who are proud of their 60-80 hour work weeks... what does that tell you about them? There truly are very few people who can keep on producing great results beyond the regular 40 hours a week. Something tells me that very few of those developers who brag about their extra hours really fit into that category. If they really did fit into that category, they'd let their results speak for themselves instead of needing to brag about the amount of effort they're putting in.
