"Do as I say, Not as I do"



  • Your parent ever say that to you when caught in a contradiction? So I lived with that with a certain ex-employer..

    We knew all the BSbuzzwords. Quality, Best Practices, Architecture, et cetera. But management really was clueless in fact. We had all those motivational / success / twist a phrase posters all over the place. Managers practiced saying the words. In retrospect it was like teaching a parrot to speak.

    It happened that we were going through a reorganization of a sort and most everyone was moving to different digs w/in the building - and taking their furniture w/ them. I was going to a different team (oh, yeah another buzzword) w/ a new boss. I took a peek at my "new" office and took offense to the roach and 8.5x11 piece of paper waxed to the floor; and the inch of wax buildup where the desk leg used to be. You see our floors were waxed on a routine basis. And if it was on the floor, it got waxed - like your computer box, desk and chair legs, and the errant bug and trash. Naturally this situation never improved despite complaints over the years. This time, however, I took the initiative to call our services guys and insist on a cleanly waxed floor. And it was the perfect time - with all the furniture out in the hallways. I told my new boss my furniture would be out in the hall an extra day to have this done. Well, the floor got waxed and they did a good job too! Now for the WTF.... I was dragged into our division chief's office and repremanded! "You should not have done that." "You should have coordinated for everyone to have it done." (I thought I wasn't supposed to do it? Besides isn't that your job!!??). Then my new boss chimed in and said "I was surprised that you were upset about it."  Yeah, that A-H didn't have his pet roach waxed to the floor for all visitors to see. This was the beginning of two nightmarish years. I developed a deep appreciation for Dilbert and the movie Office Space to say the least.

    If roach-waxed floors is acceptable, imagine what our code was like! As expected, this attitude was directly reflected in the coding and products we produced. It will not surprise you to know that place was an absolutely disfunctional coding shop. At times I genuinely felt embarrassed, and it was a professional insult to have the managers I had. Never before has the ratio of incompetence to placement been so large.



  • @radarbob said:

    I was dragged into our division chief's office and repremanded! "You should not have done that." "You should have coordinated for everyone to have it done." (I thought I wasn't supposed to do it? Besides isn't that your job!!??). Then my new boss chimed in and said "I was surprised that you were upset about it."  Yeah, that A-H didn't have his pet roach waxed to the floor for all visitors to see.

     

    I hope you said out loud those comments. Not just staid there speechless, embarrased and guilty... If it was me I would confront them with the questions who was responsible to check that and why did I ever have to do THEIR job. And also you DO CARE about where you work and HOW you work. If they don't - you do and they better start so. No joke I would have confronted them so badly that either they would stop saying anything else or even raise my salary or kick me out the same day, that would speak good enough for what I could expect in the future from them so better get it straight early than late. I had similar experience from both kinds - once I just quit (they didn't kick me out because I was way too valuable but just refused to a few SIMPLE key demands I had), the other time my salary nearly doubled .... then I started my own company and now I always appreciate people who really care what they do and how things are done. Believe me every time I deal with someone who works 8am to 5pm and then turns off his/hers phone the code he/she writes shares the same "attitude".



  • @nsimeonov said:

    @radarbob said:

    I was dragged into our division chief's office and repremanded! "You should not have done that." "You should have coordinated for everyone to have it done." (I thought I wasn't supposed to do it? Besides isn't that your job!!??). Then my new boss chimed in and said "I was surprised that you were upset about it."  Yeah, that A-H didn't have his pet roach waxed to the floor for all visitors to see.

     

    I hope you said out loud those comments. Not just staid there speechless, embarrased and guilty... If it was me I would confront them with the questions who was responsible to check that and why did I ever have to do THEIR job. And also you DO CARE about where you work and HOW you work. If they don't - you do and they better start so. No joke I would have confronted them so badly that either they would stop saying anything else or even raise my salary or kick me out the same day, that would speak good enough for what I could expect in the future from them so better get it straight early than late. I had similar experience from both kinds - once I just quit (they didn't kick me out because I was way too valuable but just refused to a few SIMPLE key demands I had), the other time my salary nearly doubled .... then I started my own company and now I always appreciate people who really care what they do and how things are done. Believe me every time I deal with someone who works 8am to 5pm and then turns off his/hers phone the code he/she writes shares the same "attitude".

    I'm your fan.

    And this case just adds more evidence to support my hypothesis that people managing IT should be IT professionals - I'm assuming the boss who wanted you to coordinate an office waxing was more of the HR (or anything else unrelated) kind of employee. Excuse my prejudice.



  • @nsimeonov said:

    Believe me every time I deal with someone who works 8am to 5pm and then turns off his/hers phone the code he/she writes shares the same "attitude".

    Sometimes people actually have lives outside of work, and don't want to be slaves to a company that wouldn't even reward their loyalty anyway.




  • @nsimeonov said:

    Believe me every time I deal with someone who works 8am to 5pm and then turns off his/hers phone the code he/she writes shares the same "attitude".

    I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because you are a business owner and you've probably had to struggle and put in huge amounts of hours. But this is a really bad attitude among employees which is far too common. My job doesn't own me. I do my job because I need money to live and enjoy my life how I want to. I don't do it just to do it. If my life is miserable because of my job, then my job is not serving its purpose, no matter how much money it's paying me.

    As a bit of context, I was employee number 11 at a small company which had existed for many years but was just blossoming into greatness at the time I came on board. I devoted my professional life to the company, and particularly to the owners. These guys were fantastic -- ex-aeronautic engineers. One of them even worked on the space shuttle. They sweated and bled for their life's work every day and treated their employees as family, and I was awestruck by that. I did the best job I could muster for those guys. Still, I only work 8 hours a day.

    Staying long hours means several things. One, it means you value your employer more than your spouse and children. That's sick. If you are single and childless, strike this count, but substitute a good helping of "Get a life -- it's about more than this."

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Three, you screw over everybody else by building the expectation that programmers work long hours. Even us GOOD ONES. We don't HAVE to work 12 or 15 hours a day, because we write good code, and yet we are expected to because of the standard set by a bunch of incompetents.

    I absolutely love programming. I've been writing code since I was (insert some ridiculously low number here) years old. I can't imagine anything I'd rather make a living of (okay, being a brewmaster might beat it out). And yet I find that my life is more important that lines of code on a computer screen.

    Please stop making life hell for the rest of us. The world will still turn if programmers have lives. Honest. 



  • @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Get your head out of your ass.   Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are.  If you haven't had one yet, you haven't been in this business long enough.

    -cw 



  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Get your head out of your ass.   Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are.  If you haven't had one yet, you haven't been in this business long enough.

    -cw 

    It means the planning department sucks, or the sales/PM routinely promises deadlines that are too early.



  • Fair enough, but then these are (or should be) exceptional situations -- and 15 hour days should not happen day after day, year after year.

    I have worked heavily, too, such as 38-hours work / 10 hours sleep / 38-hours work / 10 hours sleep. But that pace of work happened over a period of two weeks, right before an oh-so-important deadline. I needed a one-week vacation after that, and then proceed to work regular hours again, which is 8 to 10 hours (depending on personal gusto).





  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Get your head out of your ass.   Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are.  If you haven't had one yet, you haven't been in this business long enough.

    -cw 

    I'm going to agree with CodeWhisperer.  It's not always the coder's fault that things get behind.  On my team, one project has been waiting months for REQUIREMENTS.  Luckily, we can work on other things rather than twiddle our thumbs, but the deadline is looming, so the project will likely get cancelled.

    One of my company's clients actually builds this into their business model.  Set an insane deadline, then make people come in all hours to get to that deadline.  Luckily for my company, we charge them by the hour.

    However, there is truth in what you're saying.  In good code, you can find what you need quickly.  In bad code, you're searching all over for it, taking more than twice the time.



  • @dhromed said:

    @CodeWhisperer said:
    @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Get your head out of your ass.   Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are.  If you haven't had one yet, you haven't been in this business long enough.

    -cw 

    It means the planning department sucks, or the sales/PM routinely promises deadlines that are too early.

    That is definitely the truth.  Developers should not be held hostage to poor planning on the part business side.  If you're putting more than 8-9 hours a day, that is a sign either of bad code (like CodeWhisperer says) or really poor planning.

     If you're a manager, either "encouraging" or expecting people to put in long  hours, maybe you need to examine what YOU did wrong to make everything so tightly scheduled.
     



  • I think there's a difference between working 15-hour/day and turning off your phone/refusing to talk to co-workers after hours.

    It's very rare that I work longer than 8 hours (a couple weeks a year that I know about beforehand). However, I tend to log onto my Yahoo Instant Messenger account (the official IM client, for some reason) in the evening and keep my cell with me, just in case some emergency comes up.

    I can totally understand people who refuse to carry their cellphones with them, though, if they're constantly called about stupid things. But I personally know that I'll only be called if something bad happens.  



  • @rbowes said:

    I think there's a difference between working 15-hour/day and turning off your phone/refusing to talk to co-workers after hours.

    It's very rare that I work longer than 8 hours (a couple weeks a year that I know about beforehand). However, I tend to log onto my Yahoo Instant Messenger account (the official IM client, for some reason) in the evening and keep my cell with me, just in case some emergency comes up.

    I can totally understand people who refuse to carry their cellphones with them, though, if they're constantly called about stupid things. But I personally know that I'll only be called if something bad happens.  

     

    How come you never gave me your cell number, Iago?  :) 



  • This is one awesome story...

     

    I mean wow... waxing roaches... I find it funny that they just go in with the wax machine and wax the flores without doing stuff like taking the furniture out, taking paper off the floor, taking roaches off the floor.

    Also if your company begins to praise buzz words like Quality, Best Practices, etc... in words, then you can be sure the company is crap. In my current job I never hear "Our Code needs to be top quality" NEVER hear this, the code IS as high quality as we can possibly make it (and it is pretty damn good) but nobody has to tell us about it.
     



  • @dhromed said:

    @CodeWhisperer said:
    @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Get your head out of your ass.   Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are.  If you haven't had one yet, you haven't been in this business long enough.

    -cw 

    It means the planning department sucks, or the sales/PM routinely promises deadlines that are too early.

    Or, possibly, someone who has more power over technical decisions than they should has set up a hostile technical environment.  You may be stuck doing a project that would fill 8h/day in environment A but instead takes 12h/day because you're stuck with environment B.

    I've seen it first hand.  Where we should have been using ASP.NET, a real version control system, and real issue tracking, we had classic ASP, SourceSafe with a single network share that all developers worked on set up as the working directory (yes, that's right, an utter perversion of version control), a Word document with issues and test cases and documentation all in one, and a Developmestuction web/database server.

    The problems caused by the environment caused irrecoverable lost work, support issues (nobody wanted to help us with ASP 3.0 issues when .NET 2.0 was already out), and bugs that were sometimes "fixed" multiple times thanks to poor communication.  We were also powerless to change the environment.

    Also, we were using ColdFusion Studio.  This was in 2005.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @djork said:

    Or, possibly, someone who has more power over technical decisions than they should has set up a hostile technical environment.  You may be stuck doing a project that would fill 8h/day in environment A but instead takes 12h/day because you're stuck with environment B.

    Been there, done that.

    Compiling a project (Australian SCADA software if anyone's interested) on the project PCs when we eventually got hold of them: Typically 2 minutes. Or less.

    Compiling a project on the 'company IT controlled' PCs: Typically 20 minutes. Or more.

    I exaggerate slightly, but you get the picture. Compiling would happen after every slightest change later on in the project. Not something done once or twice a day.

    Requests to order the project PCs early enough in the development cycle to make a difference were acknowledged, but basically ignored. Part of the reason I'm currently (voluntarily (sp?)) unemployed.

    This ignores the WTFery with the software package to begin with, but that's another gripe.



  • @smxlong said:

    @nsimeonov said:

    Believe me every time I deal with someone who works 8am to 5pm and then turns off his/hers phone the code he/she writes shares the same "attitude".

    I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because you are a business owner and you've probably had to struggle and put in huge amounts of hours. But this is a really bad attitude among employees which is far too common. My job doesn't own me. I do my job because I need money to live and enjoy my life how I want to. I don't do it just to do it. If my life is miserable because of my job, then my job is not serving its purpose, no matter how much money it's paying me.

    As a bit of context, I was employee number 11 at a small company which had existed for many years but was just blossoming into greatness at the time I came on board. I devoted my professional life to the company, and particularly to the owners. These guys were fantastic -- ex-aeronautic engineers. One of them even worked on the space shuttle. They sweated and bled for their life's work every day and treated their employees as family, and I was awestruck by that. I did the best job I could muster for those guys. Still, I only work 8 hours a day.

    Staying long hours means several things. One, it means you value your employer more than your spouse and children. That's sick. If you are single and childless, strike this count, but substitute a good helping of "Get a life -- it's about more than this."

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Three, you screw over everybody else by building the expectation that programmers work long hours. Even us GOOD ONES. We don't HAVE to work 12 or 15 hours a day, because we write good code, and yet we are expected to because of the standard set by a bunch of incompetents.

    I absolutely love programming. I've been writing code since I was (insert some ridiculously low number here) years old. I can't imagine anything I'd rather make a living of (okay, being a brewmaster might beat it out). And yet I find that my life is more important that lines of code on a computer screen.

    Please stop making life hell for the rest of us. The world will still turn if programmers have lives. Honest. 

    Yay! Another annoying case of "everyone in the world is just like me" syndrome. It's great that your job is a means to an enjoyable life with your family. The reality is that if everyone felt that way, we'd still be living in caves and riding dinosaurs to work. Our civilization progresses because there are people that dedicate their lives to it. Obviously not everyone needs feel that way, and just because you work 150 hours a week doesn't mean you are a genius that will change the world. But the vast majority of people that have changed the world did so because they were so passionate and dedicated to something that putting it out of mind at 5:00 PM was impossible.

     



  • @obediah said:

    The reality is that if everyone felt that way, we'd still be living in caves and riding dinosaurs to work.

    Riding a dinosaur to work would be UTTER AWESOMENESS. And caves make cool houses too, there's just not enough of them.
     



  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Get your head out of your ass.   Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are.  If you haven't had one yet, you haven't been in this business long enough.

    -cw 

     

    If a project requires more than 8 hours per day per developer/engineer for an extended period then your project WILL fail.  Engineering/programming/development is an intellectual exercise, and a challenging one at that.  Generally speaking, 12 hours of work in one day is not equal to 1.5 times 8 hours work in a single day.  And as the duration of this over-exertion increases without break the efficiency decreases until it's BELOW the 8-hour day.  Do it long enough and you may end up actually going backwards.

    _You_ should get your head out of your ass and realise this truth before you do any more harm to your employees and customers and their projects and their lives.

     



  • @smxlong said:

    I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because you are a business owner and you've probably had to struggle and put in huge amounts of hours. But this is a really bad attitude among employees which is far too common. My job doesn't own me. I do my job because I need money to live and enjoy my life how I want to. I don't do it just to do it. If my life is miserable because of my job, then my job is not serving its purpose, no matter how much money it's paying me.

     

    First let's get it straight. It SHOULD NOT be a common practice (like once every 3-5 weeks or so) to have to work late and get something done before the next day. I do have a life and I respect others having it. Also I have a business and I expect others to respect it. Sometimes one may take a day off because he needs to do something personal (like take his kid to the doctor or other sort of emergency). Other time I would get an emergency call after 6pm and I will have to fix something immediately. If you believe it's too much to be disturbed with a few questions how and where to find something in code you wrote - I definitely don't want you in my team. It isn't pleasant to disturb you while you're watching some movie and drinking whatever you like to drink but the same way I would understand you that you're late because you have a flat tire I expect you to understand me when something goes wrong with the production environment. As long as it isn't urgent I wouldn't even bother calling you. That was my point. If you leave at 6pm sharp and leave your code in whatever state it was - working or not - this is something I cannot accept.

     

    @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Agreed. That's one think I try to teach my guys: if something is way too hard to do: just stop and think again or come and ask me - there's ALWAYS an easy way and when something starts getting complicated to write or maintain we should be refactorying it. It's all about maintaining the existing code in the long run anyway.

    @smxlong said:

    Three, you screw over everybody else by building the expectation that programmers work long hours. Even us GOOD ONES. We don't HAVE to work 12 or 15 hours a day, because we write good code, and yet we are expected to because of the standard set by a bunch of incompetents.

    I absolutely love programming. I've been writing code since I was (insert some ridiculously low number here) years old. I can't imagine anything I'd rather make a living of (okay, being a brewmaster might beat it out). And yet I find that my life is more important that lines of code on a computer screen.

    Please stop making life hell for the rest of us. The world will still turn if programmers have lives. Honest. 

    As I said - I don't expect everyone to work over 8hrs/day on a regular basis. Once or twice per month is ok - then we get a few packs of beer to drink for it ...... Shhh don't tell my wife about that part - I have to take a few pounds off and beer is one of the things I'm not supposed to drink but on official holidays :)



  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    @smxlong said:

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Get your head out of your ass.   Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are.  If you haven't had one yet, you haven't been in this business long enough.

    -cw 

    CodeWhisperer, while I totally agree with you - my point was that I expect some sort of commitment - something I always did when I was workong on the "other side". I don't expect people to work overtime and if they do next day or the day after that they can come or leave later or choose any other form of compensation. Guys, after all I live in Europe and you know - we're a bunch of communists here and everyone expects 4 weeks of vacation per year... at least :) No joke but official holidays this year start on December, 22nd and noone will be working until Jan 2nd... as I know my guys it's hard to say they will be doing anything close to working on January 2nd but I hope they will be sober enough on the 3rd

    Anyway - I agree that if something requires too much efforts - it's either someone failure to plan accordingly (basically - me) or there are more people needed for the project (ok that part is easy) or the code isn't what it ought to be (let's see who we have to beat for screwing things up). On the other hand no matter how good you are - everyone makes mistakes and takes wrong decisions. Even people with decades of experience. I did so much mistakes over the years it's not even funny. So if someone on the team does something wrong - instead of hiding it or trying to continue despite the wrong approach it's better to talk to me and we will figure out if we can refactor it or just start over. No joke - starting over saved more time over the years than I expected. I love what a friend used to say: the experience is proportional to the number of mistakes you did and the amount of equipment you ruined.



  • @Rodyland said:

    If a project requires more than 8 hours per day per developer/engineer for an extended period then your project WILL fail.  Engineering/programming/development is an intellectual exercise, and a challenging one at that.  Generally speaking, 12 hours of work in one day is not equal to 1.5 times 8 hours work in a single day.  And as the duration of this over-exertion increases without break the efficiency decreases until it's BELOW the 8-hour day.  Do it long enough and you may end up actually going backwards.

    _You_ should get your head out of your ass and realise this truth before you do any more harm to your employees and customers and their projects and their lives.

    I didn't understand neither my nor CodeWhisperer's poing. According to what you say: no matter what - when your work day is over you're basically dead for the company and they should not try to contact you even for a simpe 10 minutes phonecall? Working over 8hrs/day on a regular basis is bad. When you're tired you can't give 100% of what you can. On extreme situations we worked for 16 hours a couple of days. Then everyone takes a few days vacation to recover. Seems fair to me



  • @nsimeonov said:

    @Rodyland said:

    If a project requires more than 8 hours per day per developer/engineer for an extended period then your project WILL fail.  Engineering/programming/development is an intellectual exercise, and a challenging one at that.  Generally speaking, 12 hours of work in one day is not equal to 1.5 times 8 hours work in a single day.  And as the duration of this over-exertion increases without break the efficiency decreases until it's BELOW the 8-hour day.  Do it long enough and you may end up actually going backwards.

    _You_ should get your head out of your ass and realise this truth before you do any more harm to your employees and customers and their projects and their lives.

    I didn't understand neither my nor CodeWhisperer's poing. According to what you say: no matter what - when your work day is over you're basically dead for the company and they should not try to contact you even for a simpe 10 minutes phonecall? Working over 8hrs/day on a regular basis is bad. When you're tired you can't give 100% of what you can. On extreme situations we worked for 16 hours a couple of days. Then everyone takes a few days vacation to recover. Seems fair to me

     

    You're over-stating my point. I was responding to CodeWhisperer:

    "Some projects exceed the amount of work that can be done in 8 hours a day, regardless of how uber you think you are."

     

    It's not that the occasional after-hours support call or late night at the office that's the problem.  It's when this expectation becomes the norm, and bosses who think it is or should be normal.



  • Not keeping your phone about you can come back to haunt you. In Support side of IT getting an early warning of a problem can save you days or hours
    of cleanup later. The trick is limiting how many people have your number.For me this means that my boss and a few key figures have it. The rest need to call a higher up  first.



  • @smxlong said:

    I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because you are a business owner and you've probably had to struggle and put in huge amounts of hours. But this is a really bad attitude among employees which is far too common. My job doesn't own me. I do my job because I need money to live and enjoy my life how I want to. I don't do it just to do it. If my life is miserable because of my job, then my job is not serving its purpose, no matter how much money it's paying me.

    ...
    Staying long hours means several things. One, it means you value your employer more than your spouse and children. That's sick. If you are single and childless, strike this count, but substitute a good helping of "Get a life -- it's about more than this."

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    ... 

    I absolutely love programming. I've been writing code since I was (insert some ridiculously low number here) years old. I can't imagine anything I'd rather make a living of (okay, being a brewmaster might beat it out). And yet I find that my life is more important that lines of code on a computer screen.

    ...

    Agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed. I worked one late night last week because a previously undiscovered bug cropped up the night before system test, and it really ruined my day. I come home after sitting in an office from 8-5 and expect a reasonable 4 hours in which I can cook dinner for myself, wash the dishes, iron clothes for the next day, and, if I'm lucky, get in an hour or two of working on my own projects, or maybe communicating with a friend on rare occasions. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that expects 9+ hours of work per day from its populous 5 days per week. The return on those hours is marginal at best, and I would wager that most people would be more productive on a lighter work schedule. I, for one, would get more sleep and have more job satisfaction, and I have to say that those are the two most important factors in the quality of my work. I honestly think that I would get the same amount of work done if I were to work 5 hours per day, 4 days a week. I would code faster, with less interruptions and breaks in between, and still meet all my deliverables on time. Barring the rare occurrence of some extenuating circumstances that require immediate attention, I don't see it as a good idea or even necessary to work more than the already excessive 9 hour day many people are forced to adhere to.



  • @obediah said:

    @smxlong said:
    @nsimeonov said:

    Believe me every time I deal with someone who works 8am to 5pm and then turns off his/hers phone the code he/she writes shares the same "attitude".



    Staying long hours means several things. One, it means you value your employer more than your spouse and children. That's sick. If you are single and childless, strike this count, but substitute a good helping of "Get a life -- it's about more than this."

    Two, If you have to work 12 or 15 hours a day just to meet deadlines or get code working, that means YOUR CODE SUCKS. Code should not take that much work. Putting in long hours every single day isn't a sign of dedication, but of incompetence.

    Three, you screw over everybody else by building the expectation that programmers work long hours. Even us GOOD ONES. We don't HAVE to work 12 or 15 hours a day, because we write good code, and yet we are expected to because of the standard set by a bunch of incompetents.

    I absolutely love programming. I've been writing code since I was (insert some ridiculously low number here) years old. I can't imagine anything I'd rather make a living of (okay, being a brewmaster might beat it out). And yet I find that my life is more important that lines of code on a computer screen.

    Please stop making life hell for the rest of us. The world will still turn if programmers have lives. Honest. 

    Yay! Another annoying case of "everyone in the world is just like me" syndrome. It's great that your job is a means to an enjoyable life with your family. The reality is that if everyone felt that way, we'd still be living in caves and riding dinosaurs to work. Our civilization progresses because there are people that dedicate their lives to it. Obviously not everyone needs feel that way, and just because you work 150 hours a week doesn't mean you are a genius that will change the world. But the vast majority of people that have changed the world did so because they were so passionate and dedicated to something that putting it out of mind at 5:00 PM was impossible.

     

    Thanks for trolling!  Please work on your reading comprehension for next time! 



  • @radarbob said:

    roach and 8.5x11 piece of paper waxed to the floor

    This would be funny to see. I hope you took a pic to post here... 



  • @Rodyland said:

    If a project requires more than 8 hours per day per developer/engineer for an extended period then your project WILL fail. 

    I was wondering when someone would quote JoelOnSoftware ...

     


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