Comments on: Working Overtime: What It Really Means

By: Preets

Preets — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:09:11 +0000

Oh how true! The problem couldn’t be more relevant in a country like India where software is outsourced. Cost cutting is THE motivating factor for offshoring, sadly leading to complete disregard for quality and programmer work-life balance. If you as a programmer do resist the inhumane conditions, you will not only be hated by the management but also buy your co-workers who are not in a position to stand up for themselves. Eventually you will be replaced by two inexperienced developers who will willingly work 24/7 for they are more than grateful for being recruited by an international MNC.

Hopefully the software industry will mature leading to more stable and reliable working conditions for developers.

By: Gavin

Gavin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:16:17 +0000

Hit the nail on the head.

The best manager I’ve ever had said this when he first became our project manager after having worked 60-80hrs a week for a year.

“No more overtime”. He stated that if we were doing overtime, it meant he wasn’t doing his job and the team wasn’t communicating.

Something I’ll never forget.

What did this mean result in:
1. Better scheduling.
2. Better transparency.
3. Increased morale.
4. Better quality work. Meaning less rework and more work being completed.
5. We did not hate work.

By: afsharm

afsharm — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:32:37 +0000

It’s really true. I have experienced this situation several times.

By: Manuel Martone

Manuel Martone — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:58:21 +0000

I totally agree with what you said Davy, I’m impressed about the clearness of what you said.
This is unfortunately my situation, specially in this last period of time, and I’m starting to think that could be possible the company i’m working it’s not the right for me.

But I agree even with Tom De Koning when he said that, as an architecture resposible, I’m overtime more that developers does, this because I’m constantly working on exploring /refining / improving our code base, craftmanship and implementing new tech concepts (like Agatha )

But I think also that (@Tome De Koning) even if as an architect I have more overtime, even that means that something is wrong, for me for example, I have this situation because our developers leaves (aa part of them) technical debts everywhere and I have to fix, redefine, and so on…
This to say that, I think that even an architect could do the canonically 40 hours, If he/she can define an architecture, all the methodologies to apply and then the team does his works as well as the architecture says!

I agree even with jdn when he said that this is one of the reason it’s better to work as a contractor, because all of my extra time is billed! So I’m starting to think I have to comeback to my old contractor situation..
Thanks at all and sorry for my english

By: Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:44:58 +0000

@Stefan

that happened about a year ago i think

By: Stefan V

Stefan V — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:42:59 +0000

I’ll remind you of this post next time you post your pizza order on facebook at 20:00 while being in the office;)

I do however agree with your statement, as I also had the opportunity to see how bad one can code when working overtime frequently.

Cutting back to normal hours (or less) seems to be working mighty fine.

@Kevin
‘Software development is not like the other fields where we can predict the amount of work we can complete in 8 hours. It varies by a great deal and is quite unpredictable.’

Errr ? Unless you are talking about factory based construction I do feel that every field has this ‘problem’. Try to forecast how much time you will spend on drawing a flyer for some new product or how much time it will cost you to write a book just for an exercise. Heck, predicting how long it will take to iron a shirt is hard. It is not that we are all coding for the nasa rocket launcher projects. Experience and putting some effort in your estimations will tend to get you a good hunch on the workload. Try ‘poker planning’ with your team just for the heck of it and see what happens.

I do agree that it will get (even) worse if you feel that business sets deadlines that you do not control. Projects get 1 year overdue one day at a time, so inform mgmt and/or business frequently about the status of work remaining in the latter case.

Cheers,
Stefan

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 02:58:06 +0000

Most people do not want to be working overtime. But can this be helped? Most of the projects that start out require a great deal of learning or understanding the existing system which definitely takes more than 8 hours.

Also during system testing and bug fixing, when those critical bugs show up, you just can’t leave when you are tracking a bug and are half way between and probably could fix it or at least get to a certain level of fixing it.

Software development is not like the other fields where we can predict the amount of work we can complete in 8 hours. It varies by a great deal and is quite unpredictable.

And it gets worse if you are working for a project where it is expected that you will finish your work in deadlines set by the business over which you do not have any control.

By: Eric Smith

Eric Smith — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 05:44:15 +0000

I agree with this sentiment, but there’s more to it than just the fatigue issue. The fact is, that if we, as developers consistently work more than 40 hours a week, we’re lying to our bosses. That’s because an expectation is implicitly created about what we can do in a certain amount of time.

Yes, it is possible to \crunch\ for short periods and deliver, but that behaviour can’t be extrapolated to long periods of time, and that’s what management (in general) don’t grok.

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 04:22:43 +0000

Overtime is like a virus that infects a team or organization, and Workaholics are people who refuse to be vaccinated. Much like a virus, this behavior can spread to the rest of a team when individuals don’t want to appear lazy, or undedicated. Soon enough everyone is working 10-12 hour days and nobody really knows why or how it started. It gets worse when the progress spreads to leadership and they start basing projections on these hours. 37Signals has it right – fire the workaholics.

By: Tom de Koning

Tom de Koning — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:49:51 +0000

If you are working on the team as a dev, I would agree. Working overtime does NOT have a positive effect on the quality of the code. The sheer amount of shortcuts added is unbelievable. What’s worse it that you add think time to support the “why” you took the shortcut.

But, in my current role I’m responsible for the architecture of our solution. As such I’m constantly working on exploring /refining / improving our code base, craftmanship and implementing new tech concepts (like Agatha . This consumes most of my time and certainly more than 8 hours a day. Now note, I’m not only doing this for the project, most of what I’m doing is learning and as such I have difficulty determining what time is work / free time.

So, as a true consultant I think I would have to say: it depends

By: jdn

jdn — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:18:20 +0000

This is one (though not the most important) of the reasons why I work as an independent contractor, and have declined multiple opportunities to get ‘flipped’ into full-time employment at various clients. It seems that there is an expectation that people will work more than 40 hours (and not just in IT), and often times, a lot more. I’m fine with that (to a point), and as a contractor, I make it clear that I will bill for all of those extra hours.

By: Mathias

Mathias — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:05:22 +0000

Thank you for stating something which should be obvious, and yet is sadly not recognized as such. Nothing wrong with a spike of activity from time to time, it’s the nature of the beast, and it can even be fun, in the same way these “it’s-the-last-day-of-the-quarter-and-the-project-is-due-tomorrow” heroic college evenings were. But fundamentally, software is a creative activity, which requires your mind be alert to perform well – and no matter how tough you are, lack of sleep and deprivation of fun will get to everyone. Regular overtime should be a big red flag when considering a position.