Can People Really Program 80+ Hours a Week?

ibn_khaldun asks: "A question in light of the EA controversy. I'm an academic researcher who does his own programming -- I have to eat what I kill. In my 35 years of coding experience, any time I try to work on a complex program for more than, say, 60 hours a week (coding, not just showing up) for a couple weeks at a time, I'm just asking for trouble: I generate buggy code and debugging it only makes it buggier. Numerous studies in other fields (law firms, hospitals) have shown that mistakes rise exponentially after anyone works about 50 hours per week (don't think about this if you go to the emergency room at 3 a.m.)." Are these rational working conditions? (More below.)

"Does EA sprinkle magic pixie dust on their serfs to get around this problem, or is the work so trivial that it can be done while pathologically sleep deprived, or are the PHB's so technically challenged they don't realize what is going on? This whole 'death march' mentality seems absolutely crazy to me as a programmer, but appears to be common. Honestly, can someone enlighten me as to how these 80+ hour weeks ever accomplish anything?"

I think that Microsoft is using the same strategy.

How else do they manage to keep their software so secure?

To answer your question: Amphetamine

Re:I think that Microsoft is using the same strate

To answer your question: Amphetamine

"Speed" code tends to be poorly documanted and maddeningly squirrely. I've tried to use code written by a serious gak head, and it turned out to be easier to just rewrite it from scratch.

Re:I think that Microsoft is using the same strate

I think there is a very important distinction to make in this case: code head written by a speed freak is quite different from a non-addict with a mild dose of amphetamine as a coding/study aid.

Though code written by a speed freak is indeed quite fucked in the brain. Code written by stoners isn't horrible, though the overall system designs is usually either ingenius or downright retarded. If I had to pick some drug for a coder to be addicted to, I think I'd pick orally administered opiates- especially if the poor schmuck had to work 50-80+ hours a week. Opium has a long history of being used by people who did more work than they'd like to in a week, while staying sane and relatively healthy. Drunks code like shit- both alcoholics and a non-alkie coding whilst drunk. ...but what the hell is the point of thise post? I guess it's: if you're ever starting some sort of rehab work program for ex-software developers addicted to various drugs to go with opium. :P

Re:I think that Microsoft is using the same strate

You should do a more indepth study on this. I volunteer to be guinea pig, for free.

Occasionally a drink or joint can help

Oddly enough, I went throgh a period where I found coding after a couple of drinks or joints actually helped produce better code.

It was during a period where (modesty aside) I was maturing from "someone who could program well"[1] to a "good programmer"[2]. I've always been unusually aware of my own thought processes (as I suspect many programmers/hackers/martial artists/meditators/etc are), and I've noticed that good programmers all seem to go through a stage where they stop programming with their left-brain[3] and start more right-brain-thinking[4].

During this time I discovered that, as long as I already understood the problem fully, a couple of drinks (or joints) seemed to help me internalise the "rules" of a language, and spend more time on the actual creative side of programming - solving tasks without spending the whole time thinking about syntax or grammar.

Of course, some of the code was still pretty squirrely (what a wonderful word), but I do remember on several occasions waking up in the morning, running over my code again to check for bugs, and actually being blown away by how elegant some bits were - I hadn't thought I was capable of writing code like that at that point in my education. I remember one time finding a solution to a problem in linear time that I hadn't even realised sober could be done in less than exponential time, and it quite freaked me out for a while afterwards.

Even now (several years and several languages afterwards), I find coming back to a problem after a drink or toke can sometimes help you see "alternative" ways of solving it, often wildly different to how you'd normally go about it...

Fotonotes:

1. "Can program well": Can work through a task decomposition, can think in the language concerned, etc.
2. "Is a good programmer": Task decompositions tend to happen subconsciously and effectively instantaneously (as soon as you understand the problem fully). Can think in "Programming" (rather than any particular language), then convert the design into any particular language automatically, etc.
3. "Left-brain thinking": Thinking about the rules and syntax of a language and using them like tools to solve a problem, step by step. Yeah, it's a poor metaphor, but people get it easily.
4. "Right (or whole-)brain thinking": Thinking in terms of "tasks to be completed" and visualising program flow, without the actual syntax consciously occurring to you at any point. More *feeling* than thinking - the point where you just avoid a particular method because you just know "it's wrong", without having to consciously sit down and think through every implication before you know whether or not to use it.

Re:I think that Microsoft is using the same strate

And why does coffee get a pass?

Admittedly amphetamines have their downsides, and some big ones especially with frequent use, but lets not kid ourselves, caffiene isn't exactly brussle sprouts.

Hacking your body chemistry is just like anything else, it can achieve the desired effect, or it can miss wildly. Often it involves trade offs.

I dunno about you but I sleep better, and feel all around better starting about 4 days after I quit a caffination cycle (usually I quit caffiene about the time I start to feel groggy in the morning).

Of course I eventually have a few nights where I am up too late (often involving the weekly poker game these days), and end up needing to see joe in the morning.

I make no illusions though. I am not pretending that joe is health food. Its drugs, pleasant, sweet smelling, black as as a steers ass on a moonless prairy night, tasty drugs. Definitly in the top five of non-medicinal drugs ever. (though if I ever get glaucoma and pot becomes medicinal, it will make it to 4 - and with the amount of time I spend in front of pc monitors, there is a fair chance)

No

Not since Slashdot debuted.

Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

You can work 80 hours in a week, but I agree that you would find that 80 hours of work done in one week will be much less effective than 80 hours of week done in 2 weeks. There are diminishing returns on labor as time increases. But the point is that there ARE indeed returns, even at hour 80. If I work 80 hours in a week, and only get say 60 hours of good work done, that still puts me 20 hours ahead on Monday if I was working 40 hours a week.

Even if you were to assume that my productivity were to go down 10% for every hour over 50 I worked, I'd still be *somewhat* productive at hour 80. Of course it's not linear like that, but if something's *got* to get done, then it's got to get done, whether I'm tired or not.

And I find that I do have hours of clarity even at the end of a long period of work. So If I get that good hour or 2 at 70 hours, I would have missed it if I'd gone home/to sleep at 60 hours.

I don't think anyone can work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. You need some time to refresh,recycle,renew. What's a reasonable amount of time to recuperate? I think one day always seems to do it for me. I've never had to pull crazy hours like that more than a few weeks in a row, and we always found a way to take off 24 consecutive hours each week. That was what made it work.

It also helps TREMENDOUSLY to work in a cool place with cool people. If you respect everyone around, and they're all busting ass, you'll find it's EASY to do the same, and hard to let anyone else down. I knew guys who would feel guilty about going home to see their kids when crunch was on.

Is that a healthy culture? Probably not. But we did get plenty of work done, and that's I think what you were asking.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Even things that are not-quite-so mentally demanding such as electrical work become very difficult once a certain point is reached. For me, it's at about 65 hours/week.

Ok, which wire goes where now!

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

But debugging that's a bit easier - just send your assistant to find out which wires are hot :)

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Even things that are not-quite-so mentally demanding such as electrical work become very difficult once a certain point is reached. For me, it's at about 65 hours/week. Ok, which wire goes where now!

Heh. Been there too, man. I was an electrician working on the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas during the two weeks before it opened. We were still pulling wire the night before the grand opening, and we'd been working 16 to 20 hours a day all that last week, and many of us worked 36 hours straight the last two days. I tell 'ya, we were making really bad mistakes left and right. One thing about electrical errors, they're a lot easier to find than programming bugs. You just look for the smoke coming out of the fluorescent ballasts and then check which circuit got piped into the 277V panel instead of the 120V one. The only good part was getting paid triple-time at union scale.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Isn't it possible that the quality of work after some point is so bad that it actually takes as much or more time to fix it as it did to do it in the first place? If that's the case, it's not just diminishing returns - it's negative returns.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

it's negative returns.

This matches my experience. I (and the teams I've worked on) can work long overtime (60 to 80 hours) for a few weeks... maybe even a month or two rarely.

But continually? Or to even attempt to pull one of these months every quarter? I can't do it. The people I know who think they can do it can't do it either.

We always ended up making bad mistakes that took a lot of time to clean up. We missed obvious architectural improvements that could have saved us days of work. We overwrote code and trashed data! :)

The point is that someone who is very tired will make a lot of basic mistakes that waste a lot of time. Someone who is well-rested and thinking clearly will be much more efficient. Work can progress smoothly and somehow you will be able to work calmly, not dealing with crisis after crisis, like the 80 hour teams do.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Isn't it possible that the quality of work after some point is so bad that it actually takes as much or more time to fix it as it did to do it in the first place?

This is absolutely true. The lead programmer on my current project works at least 60 hours every week (and has for years) and more than that about half of the time. He's in at 6:30am and usually leaves around 6:30 or 7:00pm and he NEVER takes lunch breaks. Towards the end of the week, any problem that he "solves" quickly usually requires at least a day or more to re-fix later on. Unfortunately, his seniority makes him almost untouchable when reporting problems like this to senior management who see him as "dedicated and just as productive as everyone else". What they don't seem to notice is that he needs to work about 25-30% more hours per week than the rest of the staff just to produce adequate (not great) code.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to present something like this to management in a convincing manner?

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to present something like this to management in a convincing manner?

Resign.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Well, then what to do depends on the situation at work. Here's a couple of possible paths to try, depending on what is accessable to you:

1) If you can get away with (as in no repercussions to you) not fixing his mistakes, don't do it. Make sure it's clearly documented who's mistakes they are, and leave him to flounder. It's likely that if it causes problems, management will eventually wake up to the fact that he's the problem. Just make sure you are covered and whon't be blamed for his faliures. If you will, it's not worth it.

2) Find out who the managers trust and have them help you out. There may not be anyone who's in a position where they are willing and able to help. but if there is, enlist their help. Explain the problem, and show it to them, and then ask them to bring it up with the managers. People are odd with trust and advice. You may be technicaly superior to give advice, but they'll take it from someone in another department that they personally trust.

3) If all else fails, fuck it, just ignore it. There are many stupidities where I work, the ones I can't control I just accept and ignore. Sounds like you like your job overall, so don't stress on it. Yes, I'm sure it means your team doesn't do things as efficiently and as high quality as possible, but really, it doesn't matter. Just live with it and do what you can.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

But what if management always see's this guy there at his desk and yourself as the one leaving early and coming in later?

All of the sudden it does affect you because the PHB's look at yourself as the slacker.

That is the problem.

Image is everything in corporate America and politics comes in and the guys who appear to work harder are the ones always heard.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Because immediate, crappy results are better than delayed, well-done results to a PHB. Try reading one of those 'Management for Dummies' books or any managment book that claims to give results merely by reading it. Those books basically outline all the managment techniques that piss us off. My boss is great, but he still suffers from getting seduced by numbers.

'Can we upgrade to Solaris 10? It's 2 better than Solaris 8!'

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Towards the end of the week, any problem that he "solves" quickly usually requires at least a day or more to re-fix later on.

So if what he does Mon-Thu is adequate, and what he does on Friday wastes next Monday, he's effectively productive for 60% of the time. 60% of his 60h week is 36 hours, so maybe he's not doing any worse than you.

Just a thought,

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

An interesting footnote on this whole "hours of time coding" issue...

The world's largest privately held software company is a company called SAS in North Carolina. Their software is basically an environment for doing statistical analysis. Regression, multiple regression, correlation, wilcoxon rank tests, and a slew of other things I haven't got to yet. But the important part is, if you were going to do a study to figure out the "optimal" amount of time to work, and consider not just productivity from the programmer, but all sorts of correlated variables (will someone work 80 hours/week for 10 years? How much will it cost to recruit and train a newbie when someone burns out?) then you would probably use a program like SAS to analyze the data. This is a company that has plenty of computer science and statistics Ph.D.'s on staff.

Their conclusion? 35 hours per week. Keeps the productivity high, the turn over low, and the company growing at double digit rates nearly every year (or maybe it has been every year).

Something to think about during your next interview cycle.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Their conclusion? 35 hours per week. Keeps the productivity high, the turn over low, and the company growing at double digit rates nearly every year (or maybe it has been every year).

Something to think about during your next interview cycle.

Something to think about when libertarians/conservatives claim Europe is hopelessly behind in competitiveness. We get the same amount done AND we have much more pleasant lives.

The point of diminishing returns is just the start

There are diminishing returns on labor as time increases. But the point is that there ARE indeed returns, even at hour 80.

This is *not* necessarily true. There is a point of diminishing returns, as you say (which I'm at right now at 6PM the day before Thanksgiving), and there's a point of NEGATIVE returns. That's where you work so much that you actually start to create more problems than positive work. Admittedly, that's not a point I often reach, but it's a point that definitely does exist. I am an astrophysicist, and I can tell you that while working into the wee hours of the night is often necessary, sometimes when I'm there at 4 AM, and I know I'm calculating things wrong, I just go home. I know, I'm a big slacker, but if I DON'T go home, I'll just be making a bigger mess for myself to clean up.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

"Even if you were to assume that my productivity were to go down 10% for every hour over 50 I worked, I'd still be *somewhat* productive at hour 80. Of course it's not linear like that, but if something's *got* to get done, then it's got to get done, whether I'm tired or not."

You're making the faulty assumption that negative work never occurs. However, it is not at all rare that a mistake made in one minute can later require ten minutes of time to correct.

At a certain point, the productivity of an individual reaches the point where the mistakes they make during an hour will take more than an hour to correct. Since errors in coding aren't fatal, the problem probably won't arise after fifty hours a week, but it seems possible and even likely that it will arise after sixty hours a week.

Although this may not apply as much to EA, it applies a lot in most the rest of computing. EA makes games, and games are mostly just a get-it-out-the-door type of product. You test for errors, make sure it's clean, then sell it. However, anything that will need to be upgraded to a newer version at some point will need to have clean, maintainable code. For that sort of material, I think you will, overall, start getting negative returns after about sixty hours a week. As far as games go, though, you really might not hit the point until after seventy or eighty hours.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

I remember one major coding crunch at the small software company I used to work for: We were preparing a significant set of enhancements to our core product, while at the same time working on bringing to market a major new product. The two projects shared giant chunks of code and logic, so it wasn't completely off the wall, but it was still clear that we were going to have an awfully long, hard slog ahead of us.

As a kind of non-overtime overtime incentive pay, management set up a deal to pay a bonus at the end of the project, based on hours worked above a certain point, with all kinds of complicated sliding averages and whatnot. My office-mate and I crunched the numbers, and realized that in order to get any appreciable bonus at the end of the project, we would basically have to commit to 60 hour weeks for the indefinite future.

Well, you know, neither of us were exactly in our twenties any more. I had a wife and a brand new house and a 45 minute each way (non rush hour) commute; and while I still felt spry and nimble, I no longer felt immortal and god-like, even with the help of Mountain Dew and m&ms. I was in my mid-to-upper thirties. I decided that, while I was still capable of working arbitrarily many hours in a week for short bursts during an emergency, there was no way that my health would stand up to 55 to 60 hour work weeks every week, indefinitely. Both my office-mate and I decided not to bother signing up for the bonus program.

<irony> (A couple of years later, I fell ill with a chronic and incurable medical condition which has left me essentially unable to perform any work at all; so I suppose I needn't have bothered being so careful).</irony>

In fact, much to management's chagrin, only one member of our small programming staff -- call him "X" -- actually decided to commit to their schedule.

Determined to get a decent bonus for his troubles, X threw himself into it, working 60 and 65 hour weeks. In the meantime, my office-mate and I upped our hours, too, but to a lesser extent: 55 hours one week, 52 the next; and so forth.

The weeks wore on, and we inched along towards our various goals. X was doing his usual fine work, but he was looking more and more haggard (we were all a bit worse for wear, actually). His code got a little sloppier at times.


And then one morning, he committed a bunch of working code to the wrong place, and instantly wiped out about 20% of our company's source code repository.


Did we have backups? Yes, we had backups; but still, it took three or four of us much of the day to both restore everything and to verify that everything was correct. The final tally was, roughly, at least one full man-day flushed down the drain in fifteen seconds due to nothing more than pure exhaustion.

Eventually, the crush passed, of course. It is probably a coincidence that X left the company shortly thereafter, although he came back a year later or so. He's a very good programmer, but some of the code he wrote during that crunch -- especially later on -- was, shall we say, sub-optimal.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Yes i think so. I find that overworking mainly reduces my capacity to see the big picture. To understand the implications of each change I make.

If the code is well architected, then my return past 40 hours does not diminish so quickly. But chances are if they are asking you to work past 48 hours, your management lacks management abilities, and are askin you to make up for their shortcomings.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Absolutely

Intelligent healthy young people can spend most of their waking hours doing simple tasks which do not require exceptional creativity. The deffinition of work which can be accomplished in a sixty hour working week is therefore non creative and repetitive.

If you are working sixty hours plus a week, then you are not doing work which taxes your mind and you are wasting your talents. Of course its on offer and does pay the bills and therefore is not neccessarily a bad thing from a financial point of view. However it is bad for your physical, mental, spititual and social health.

Variety is the spice of life, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy, addicts do not make good friends - I can think of no aphorisms which praise spending excessive time doing the same thing. Why do you think Archimedies is reputed to have discovered the law of displacement of water being equal to the weight of a floating body in the bath - most insights are generated when you walk away from the task and see the whole picture whilst your mind idles. Maybe your job is so simple that your not even thinking about it half of the time and you can solve the interesting problems whilst "working" - in which case a machine should be doing that "work". Thats how the industrial revolution changed the world of "work" and its comming to the world of software real soon now.

If sucess is just a question of working more hours then beware, because half the world is underemployed and they are a lot cheaper than you.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Physically there is a mental exhaustion limit, and no matter how much caffiene or other substances you pump into your body, your brain will just quit.

Sure, you can work for 80 hours a week. However, during that time your brain is burning chemicals. Sleep is required to regenerate the loss. Sleep deprivation/mental over-work is similar to any other mind altering state. You think you're doing fine and being just as productive, however in reality your performance gets worse and worse. And yes, when your brain reaches its limit IT WILL SHUT YOU DOWN! Passing out is usually the main result.

BTW, that's also not really good for the rest of your body, considering your brain is the regulator.

Doing long hours for short durations aren't bad. But the longer the period of time, the more self -defeating it becomes.

~X~

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

I dare say that when you have a severe case of the stupids is the best time to test.

You are much more likely to do the same stupid shit your users will do.

Make notes. Make automated tests. Fix it when you are fresh.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

I did it a few times... but not for long. It depends on the level of involvement you have on the project and how interested you are to that project.

Without counting programming blitz at home, so far, my worst cases were:

- 60 hours for 3 weeks, followed by a 4-day blitz of 12+ hours per day.
- 2 weeks to do a 3 months project (2 weeks at 12+ hours per day, last days "till you drop, wake up and start again")
- 2.5 days non-stop.

The first example meant a buggy software. We had to code for months under pressure (at 40hr/wk) and had to implement new features and correct bugs for 3 weeks with overtime blitz and finally we had to finalize things under horrible pressure for a few days while the client was actually waiting on the line. The project was ambitious, the idea was good but it was too late for too little.

The second example, I was required to create a software from scratch, with a semi-specific design. After thinking about it a few hours, I immersed myself in code, taking time to auto-demote myself to a coder level and put a "do not disturb under death penalty" sign around my neck. People knew it was hard, I knew it was hard. I was under my own things and after hectic days of coding, I released a somehow bug-free software. Very minor tweaks and nudges had to be done for the final version, mostly due to interfacing with other people's work.

The third example, something slipped management's mind and I had to rush a new feature. The feature was made. I was happy.

In all these examples, only the first one was a disaster, mainly because we were pressed to do something for a very long time, giving our 120% for weeks, followed by giving yet again our 150% for a few weeks, followed by giving a 200% for days. One has only so many percentages in reserve. :)

The lesson here is how much sustained work I was able to give, at comparable quality. A programmer is somehow like an artist: if he is given time to contemplate his canvas first and at various times during the project, he is able to create something much better than someone who just go heads on and resurface when it's done.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

" You can work 80 hours in a week,"

Why, yes, I can.

My computer, unfortunately cannot. It starts making a lot of dumb mistakes during an extended days work.

So do my pencils and pens. It a damn equipment problem, I can do it, really.

References (DeathMarch, PeopleWare)

The definitive work on the Subject is DeathMarch [amazon.com] by Edward Yourdon. He goes over why these kinds of project keep happening, why they're bad (with numbers) and what to do if you're caught up in one. No silver bullet, but pretty good. If you're a manager or you want to slip something under your manager's door, I really liked PeopleWare [amazon.com]. It's not about the Death March, per se, but more about how to handle a software engineer like a human being. Of course, some PHB's don't think this is a reasonable approach.

Re:Well, it can be done. But can it be done well?

Sorry, Frenchmen are the 21st most productive [wikipedia.org] people in the world

Hmmm... let me fix that. *logs on to Wikipedia*

Done!

I reload Slashdot...

80 hours a week.

pixie dust...

.....yeah of the columbian variety!

sleep during the meetings

I suspect most of the programmers working 80+ hours a week spend at least half of it not actively writing a line of code, be it meetings, waiting for some script to finish or reading slashdot.

Answer is NO!!

Personally every person has a capacity and coding 80+ hours without any problems personally to health or even to the code's health is out of the question. I totally agree that it is going to generate very buggy code and may result in more hours trying to debug it. Instead the entire process should be well organised and time alloted to have the best result.

EA's real rate from the articles I could find

$17/hr. That's what they expect to pay for artwork done in 80-110 hour weeks. On the plus side- that many hours means you're pulling down $100,000 a year....

Re:EA's real rate from the articles I could find

$17/hr. That's what they expect to pay for artwork done in 80-110 hour weeks. On the plus side- that many hours means you're pulling down $100,000 a year....

I say that's not much left after you're done paying for your divorce lawyer and your triple heart bypass when you reach forty...

I did the death marches, the crazy overtime, and the stress before, and you know what? I'd rather be paid half as much but stay 10 times more healthy and happy in my family. And yes, it does pay the bills and the mortgage, as long as you plan your spendings reasonably and you don't live on credit like most Americans do.

EA Controversy

For those that dont know, here for about this 'EA controversy':

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/ [livejournal.com]

I'm actually taking today off for that reason

I called in Well today because I went in to work on Saturday. I never would have considered that at my old job but I'm finally starting to realise that if I restrict myself to 40 hour weeks I get a lot more done and I have more time to take care of important things like household chores and family stuff.

You bet. I'm living proof.

I've coded, on average, 70 hours a week, for the last six years. This has been on my own project, which is coming along nicely (after about a dozen complete rewrites, language changes, and overhauls).

I don't think I could accomplish this on someone else's code, however. If you love the project you're working on -- if you really believe in it, you can push yourself past the limits of a 50 hour work week. If it's just a job to you, then that motivation isn't there.

But then again, as my signature says, caffeine can help. Not in the long term, but I think people could definitely exceed 80 hours of worthwhile coding in a week if they were consuming lots of caffeine. It really is a wonder drug.

EA doesn't deserve all this criticism. We live in a free market, if those coders don't like their 80 hour weeks, they should quit.

Maybe I should apply at EA.

Re:You bet. I'm living proof.

I've coded, on average, 70 hours a week, for the last six years. This has been on my own project, which is coming along nicely (after about a dozen complete rewrites, language changes, and overhauls).

What are you working on- Duke Nukem Forever? :)

Re:You bet. I'm living proof.

I've coded, on average, 70 hours a week, for the last six years. This has been on my own project, which is coming along nicely (after about a dozen complete rewrites, language changes, and overhauls).

Stop posting on Slashdot Broussard, and get back to finishing Duke Nuken Forever for petes sake - you've had long enough.

Regards,

Your Investors. :)

we're not worthy, u r teh roxxor

I've coded, on average, 70 hours a week, for the last six years. This has been on my own project, which is coming along nicely (after about a dozen complete rewrites, language changes, and overhauls).

After the second complete re-write, you stopped being a poster boy for efficient, sustainable development practices.

HTH, HAND.

Don't you remember the anti-drug commercial?

I do more coke so I can work more hours so I can make more money so I can do more coke.

Not everyone at EA is a programmer

I think its important to note that not everyone pulling 80 hour work weeks at EA is a programmer. There are a ton of 3d artists there too. And honestly, as a 3d artist myself I can say: plenty does get done in those extra hours. Its not all neccesarily good. But since "ok looking" art is a bit more subjective than a hard and fast bug, its easy to say the 80+ hour work week is more productive than the 50 hour when it comes to the artists I would immagine. For managers at least...

80? 80? That's what I call a vacation.

In my last place (a visual effects company) people worked at least 9am-10pm 7 days a week for long periods, and some frequently worked into the small hours. Maybe a 30 minute lunch break.

Don't work in visual effects. It's a crap business.

You're missing the point.

It's not about getting the job done. It's not about getting the job done well. It's about being seen to be getting the job done. There's a difference there -- it looks subtle, but it's actually very profound.

The Pointy Haired Bosses want to be seen to be doing everything in their power to get the job done, on time and on budget. They see that things are falling behind schedule. What's the instinctive reaction when you're falling behind? Jack up the pace. That means making people work longer and longer hours to try to catch up.

They don't know, or don't care because the Powers That Be don't know, that this is counter productive. They don't know, or don't care, that they're more likely to fall even further behind schedule this way than if the people on the job just do regular hours.

By pushing their people beyond reasonable limits, their bosses can pat them on the back and say, "Well, you did your best, but it wasn't good enough. Obviously we need to check our scheduling better next time." There are no control groups to demonstrate that it was the overscheduling that caused the rampant deadline misses, the excessive bugs, etc.

Some crunch time is fine -- if you're close to being finished, and you have a hard deadline, crunching can get the job done when nothing else can. It's overdoing it that kills you. If I were a manager, I'd be erring on the side of too little crunch time -- not too much. And I'd probably be sacked because the perception would be that I hadn't done everything I could to finish the project on time.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The only solution is education, and that ain't gonna happen if those that need educating don't know that they need educating.

Eat what you kill? How badly do you need to kill?

> I'm an academic researcher who does his own programming -- I have to eat what I kill.

If you have tenure, you don't have to kill in order to eat. If the professor you're working for has tenure, he doesn't need you to kill in order to eat.

The reason people work 80+ hour weeks is because if the project doesn't ship on a certain date (and this is particularly prevalent in the games industry, in which payment is often contingent upon meeting milestones), they don't eat.

"OK, so why not set the milestones a little more properly -- so that you're not forced into such a situation to begin with?", I hear you cry.

If you're a game studio, and you demand sane milestones, the publishing house won't sign the contract. And that means you don't even get into the buffet line, let alone eat.

In academic terms: Nobody has tenure. And unless he was willing to sign his firstborn away as part of a contract that guarantees delivery of either a Nobel prize or a $500M IPO out of your research within six months, your professor doesn't even get to apply for the grant money.

From experience

since I had to do this and not once either, sure, it's possible. It's not desirable over a long period of time, for example more than a month of this kind of stress and you start getting sick, you don't get enough sleep, you become very tired. It's not good in the long run. A week or two at 80 hours is doable without losing that much quality.

Don't do it...

70 or 80 hours a week may be possible for a young programmer but it would kill me. Literally. If I didn't die from a heart attack I would fall asleep on the way home and possibly kill someone else as well as myself.

Why do that to your body? Trust me, your health is worth more than the overtime.

Working 80 hrs vs. enjoying 80 hrs

I think this issue depends on one's emotion state as much as the "work" load. I've been extremely productive on some fun, challenging assignments that made me want to spend every waking moment thinking about the problem. But if the problem (or associated people) are unpleasant/unworthy, then productivity goes to crap in no time. I think some of this is related to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow" (an introduction to the idea [talentdevelop.com]) in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience [amazon.com].

Simple Answer: No.

Anybody saying otherwise is bullshitting.

Depends

Yes, it's possible to work for 80 hrs a week, or even more. However, you need to define "work" here. Would you define reading/replying to emails as work? Would you define attending meetings as work? Believe me, these small numbers add up to take away a sizeable portion of your workday and your energy.

If you're talking about pure coding, IMHO, coding is not a tap that can be turned on and off at will. One needs to "get into the flow" to get some real coding done, and this doesn't happen easily (at least for me). I'll often spend hours tinkering around with stuff, browsing some site, but won't for the death of me, be able to finish writing a simple class or stored procedure. Maybe, i'll keep getting stuck, maybe i'll be too distracted, maybe i'll decide to read some documentation instead. Then, suddenly, everything will start happening smoothly and i'll complete a day's work in a couple of hours.

I don't know if it works the same way for others, but i really feel that one cannot just keep coding continuously all day. At the same time, i will also not consider the interstitial time spent tinkering around and writing comments in /. as time wasted. It's also an integral part of the process of coding. Hence, i do claim that one can "work" for 80 arse a weak.

Re:Depends

Hell yes.

I work 40 hour weeks. Eight hours a day, five days a week. Sometimes ten hours a day, four days a week - depends on my schedule and how I'm feeling.

Usually, two or three of those days I don't get anything done. I write a few lines of code, run a build, get bored waiting, read Slashdot (or k5, or gamasutra, or somethingawful, or bash.org, or webcomics), repeat.

Occasionally I sit down and suddenly everything clicks and I get, like, a week's worth of work done in a day.

Generally, at my job, I tackle crazy insane problems that nobody's even sure are possible. And so I need lots of mulling time ("how am I even going to approach this?") and it works for me. More than one person has been surprised at how much I get done . . . I don't really mention how little time I actually spend working. :P

So far today's been slackoff, but I can feel my brain revving up. Once I'm done with Slashdot I think I can get some real work done today. :)

Re:Depends

"Mulling time" is work, too. Imagine working 9am-10pm and *then* having "mulling time". Your brain would be frying eggs within a week; frying itself within two weeks.

I try to find something necessary-but-dull to do whilst mulling - timesheets, replying to idiotic emails, whatever, though - kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and you also "look productive"

Naive loudmoth

It's common hospital practice in the medical industry to work interns and residents upwards of 12 hours a day. The practice has been defended in the past as nessecary to educate our soon-to-be doctors on the diseases a hospital may see. In fact, I believe more than a few people have said that "the tradgedy of 12 hour intern workdays is that they're not in the hospital for the other 12." There's also been a backlash at the lack of people opting for specialties that demand this insane behavior. Mostly illwill directed at radiologists and other "doctors of convinence."

But I've never seen a scientific study show that interns and other medical professionals are as effective on hour 12 as hour 3. Its been a while since I've studied this at all; its possible that today the AMA and acadamia has condemned the practice, but I wouldn't count on it.

Only in bursts

In my case I have pulled 35hr all-nighters which when added to the regular time in the week is a little over 80hrs over 7 days.

However, in those cases, the all-nighter is fueled by intense adrenalin trying to meet a deadline, and I have found that my code doesn't appear to suffer. My trick is to drink lots of water during (YMMV).

As long as the 80hr week is a rarity, then I can deal with it. But making a habit of doing more than a typical week's work (about 60hr) would surely kill me.

Simple solution: Don't buy EA games.

Does EA sprinkle magic pixie dust on their serfs to get around this problem

From the NY Times article, it sounds like EA uses coercive techniques and naive young employees. My own response is that I won't buy another game from EA until they reform the way they treat their employees, and I encourage others to adopt the same policy.

My attitude on this isn't just sympathy for EA employees. It's enlightened self-interest. At 35, I'm apparently too old to get a job with EA at any salary, let alone a fair one working under fair conditions. I choose not to support such companies.

Will you forward this story to your manager?

The first group of posts indicate that we mostly agree that programming (or working in general) for more then 80 hours is not productive and harms your lifestyle. Hardly a groundbreaking conclusion, though there are enough people out there that might have felt that they should work this much because everyone else seems to.

So what are you going to do with this knowledge? Are you going to have a talk with your peers? How about your manager? Or bring it up at the next all-hands, right after the available high-ups tell you how fine your company is doing? How should we bring this up without fear for our jobs?

Here are some things to think about (feel free to add):
- Post anonymously. If you are truly affraid of consequences, try to do something like what the EA employee spouse did. Post an anonymous letter with your complaints. Keep the letter constructive.
- Talk to the right person. Before you pour your heart out, make sure you are talking to the right person.
- If your boss doesn't listend to you, consider talking to his/her boss instead. If this is too much of a step, consider talking to HR first.
- Talk to coleagues to measure how they are feeling. It could be usefull to break this feeling to your bosses as a group.
- Be carefull not to whine. You want a discussion, this includes listening to the others sides argumentation of why you have to work this way.
- No statistic should tell you how you should feel.

Lets get of our whining asses and start the discussion with the people that will allow you to get your life back on track. This here slashdot forum, though a decent source of news, is not the place where this particular issue will be solved. If you feel strongly about this topic then please do make a start at really solving it...it is your life you know.

Comparison to Construction

Prior to my current position I was a Cost/Schedule Engineer with a construction firm. There have been numerous studies on labor productivity versus hours per week worked and they all point to an optimum long term weekly rate of around 50 hours in the building trades.

For short term gains (read: less than two weeks), 60 or 72 hours can give you a boost, but after abour 3 weeks you actually would have been farther along chugging at 50 hours per week than at 72. After a week or two of 72 hour weeks productivity is in the toilet.

Also, safety problems increase, attendance problems arise, etc. etc.

No construction site in the world would consider working those hours long term since it is so counterproductive.

Waiting For The Weekend

This book goes into this in great detail:

Waiting for the Weekend
by Witold Rybczynski
http://tinyurl.com/6kt4r [tinyurl.com] [amazon.com]

The author discusses the disruption of the development of leisure time and it's implications for modern society. It's not a pretty picture. Welcome to salary slavery.

Against EU Law

> Are these rational working conditions?

Of course not, which is why here in the EU it's against the law to be employed for more than 48 hours per week. No-one benefits from longer working hours: employers suffer diminishing returns and employees turn in to square-eyed antisocial nutters.

(A partial exception is Britain, where employees can work more than 48 hours, but only if they "volunteer" to do so.)

It gets harder with seniority

Young coders can be more focussed with fewer distractions. Older coders tend to take on more job responsibilities. Constant little interrupts cause great losses in productivity - it can take me up to 20 minutes to get back in to the flow even after a 5 minute interruption to help somebody else.. Younger people also tend to have fewer out of work distractions. The people going to EA are often very keen and willing to sacrifice their personal lives for work. I remember those days back in the .com boom when I was only 21 ;)

I've also found that as I get older (almost 30) that I have harder time sleeping. If I work until the wee hours it's harder for me to make up the next night by sleeping for long enough (I managed to sleep for a whole 7 hours the other day - I was so impressed!). If I work too late of an evening then I have trouble sleeping that night, which also needs to be made up later in the week. I still like to binge drink like I'm 18 again at the weekends so I don't catch up then either.

I think going a 40 to 50 work week is hardest. Anything beyond 50-55 hours and people start substituting their social lives by socializing at work. I feel sorry for those with families working that hard. In my experience every 2-3 hours extra work after that is only equivalent to an hour of 40-hour-a-week work. And yes, errors go up, things get forgotten, process goes by the way-side and there's always something that comes back and bites your further down the road. You end up constantly in a reactive fighting fires mode.

The US (at least) needs another labor movement

Realizing that a lot of techies really like their jobs, and, for an overly stereotyped handful, jobs/computers are their lives, am I the only one that's sick and tired of being asked to compete with people stupid enough to put up with 50-60-70-80 hour workweeks on a regular basis?

Dammit, people, the reason the PHBs can get away with this sh1t is that they know that even if you have the self-respect to refuse they can easily replace you with someone that doesn't value self and family enough to say no.

I know that folks in the US have been trained from birth to believe that worker solidarity = communism = ultimate evil, but those whose comments can be summed up as "stop yer whining and get back to work" miss the damn point. I want to work to live, not live to work. When there are enough workers willing to whore themselves out, it makes it impossible for the non-whores to expect fair treatment.

If the developer community would stop putting up with it, the PHBs wouldn't be able to require it anymore.

yes i can - sorta

I can write code without any sleep. I've worked 24+ hours straight without sleep. Bear in mind that writing code isn't the primary function of my job, but I still do a reasonable amount of scripting and programming.

I can code but I can't debug very well after I've been working for about 12+ hours. That goes for debugging code, debugging network problems, tuning a filesystem, etc., anything that requires high-level cognitive abilities. I can't even fucking drive right after pulling an all-nighter, let alone debug where I'm running off the end of an array or whatnot.

And for the people that make comments about getting high, yeah fucking right. Any of my above statements involving lack of sleep apply just as well if you're high ( be it speed, too much coffee, pot, whatever ). Very productive, but not able to think more than 3-5 layers deep into a problem ( and forget about juggling multiple complex problems ), and not all that creative either.

I know a few people who've died through overwork

A few years ago, I worked as a contractor for a certain large company. This company is notorious for driving people too hard, so I had reservations about working there.

When my contract was handed to me for signing, the default "max 8 hrs x 5 days per week" clause had been removed. I asked about that, as that clause generally serves as protection for both my customer (they don't get slugged for huge dollars and can plan their cash flow accordingly) and me (I get to see my family). The company replied that it was normal practice for them to remove any such clauses.

A few weeks in, and most of the people around me were working 18 hour days regularly (I started right around crunch time). I made a policy decision as follows:
- I'd work up to 14 hours a day
- once I'd worked 60 hours a week, I'd go home

Remember I was a contractor; I didn't feel any personal or professional commitment towards a management group that had put into place these sorts of work practices, and it was quite obvious to anyone working there that the long hours being worked were leading to mistakes that led to additional hours being worked to fix them.

Anyway, as expected, I got confronted pretty quickly about my perceived slacking off. My response was that I hadn't signed up for a lifestyle change; I was after income, pure and simple. Being close to Xmas, I was quite happy to work a few extra hours, pocket some extra cash and thus fund a nicer holiday, but that was the extent of the sacrifice I was prepared to make for the cause.

I pretty much had them over a barrel at that point; there was no time to train someone to replace me, and I'd made it abundantly clear what my motivations were and that they were essentially non-negotiable.

My personal lack of commitment was discussed in front of the rest of my workmates, by my boss, at the next team meeting. I took it on myself to respond, outlining my reasons for working as I did and that I didn't regard limiting myself to 60 hour weeks as being a lack of commitment - I said I thought it showed a lack of planning, and left it at that. When I finished, you could have heard a pin drop...

A few days prior to Xmas, my boss didn't turn up. This was strange, given that he worked huge hours himself, but not unexpected since pretty much everyone was quite ill at that point due to tiredness and shared (airborne) diseases. When he didn't turn up the next few days either, someone called his house and there was no answer. Eventually a relative of his went to his house and found he'd hung himself in the bedroom.

I've got no doubt at all that his death was 90%+ due to overwork, possibly exacerbated by my taking a somewhat defiant stance in public several days earlier. He'd lived alone and worked huge hours for the past several years, so there was no real possibility for other issues to have caused his suicide.

After a few months' thought, and subsequent discussions with my fellow workmates at that place, I decided that what had happened had been pretty grim but ultimately good things had come out of it. Work practices in that particular group had changed quite dramatically in the following few months; the new boss had put caps on the number of hours worked each day and each week, and re-introduced paid overtime for full time employees. Although several people had left (the turnover in that group ran close to 80% per year), those that were still there were now working in a way they felt was personally and professionally sustainable.

Having several of them call me up to thank me for taking a stance in a very awkward environment certainly helped me personally, although my "stance" was totally selfish.

Since then, I simply refuse to work in "death march" situations. I find the whole idea totally absurd; the end result is that a crappier product is shipped slightly sooner, but people's lives are affected too much for the trade-off to be worthwhile. I've seen two deaths (one described above), several bitter divorces, peo

Re:I know a few people who've died through overwor

If I also may use some intuition, I would guess you've either been too close to a similar situation (or even at that same company) -- by your seemingly unfounded accusation. Or else you have been pushed out of a situation you like -- i.e you didn't "win" like the previous poster.

I would guess you're in a situation of working too many hours that you cannot get out of, and you are envious of the previous poster's situation. I am guessing you want out but seem stuck.

You have found the need to put the poster down personally proving you disagree with what he says. The difference between attacking the poster instead of his story tells me you don't want this type of story to be told. You are in an unfortunate situation. I don't envy you.

You will have a hard time getting the independence you want, until you see the truth in the previous story instead of fighting against it. By fighting against it you are helping to keep your self in an undesirable situation.

From your bitter comment, I don't expect to receive an answer -- what's better is no answer, but that you do some serious thinking instead. I hope you get things straightened out because it's never fun to be in a bad situation.

Whew! How do you feel now? :)

A solution to this problem

Two words: Unionize coders.

I know many of you out there will hate that suggestion, but it's a tool workers have to stop runaway PHB's. Here are the difficulties:
* Defining who is a "coder", because any union contract would immediately have management trying to make employees not part of that contract.
* It's got to be international, so that our colleagues in New Delhi are on the same side as we are.
* Getting people to join.

If we can organize ourselves to produce desktop suites, surely we can organize ourselves to give us more money and time.

Quality suffers

Over time as a family life puts hard constraints on my hours I have realized that if I really maximize the quality time I can get my job done without the extra hours.

I'd done lots of these non-stop coding fests. At least for me, there's like this illusion going on. You put in the hours, but in reality those extra hours aren't accomplishing nearly as much as you can when you're fresh and had some time to let your subconscious percolate the ideas down. You use the volume of hours to paper over the fact that you're not very good at organizing and utilizing your time.

Yeah, there are crunch times but it is so easy to fall into the lifestyle where you stay late, but then come in late, fooling yourself that you're actually getting a lot done by the lateness that you stay.

I also would find myself wasting more time distracting myself (espeically web surfing) when my mind was telling me it was time to quit and go home and rest.

Lastly, one device that helped me was to have a clock with an hourly chime. Then each hour I can ask myself "What do I have to show for this past hour of work?!?" It helps me realize that you can easily burn an hour without realizing it on 3 Slashdot comments, some stock quotes, and some pinball research.

Yes, I have written working code at 80 hours a wk.

This was done in two 36 hour days and one 4 hour day, for a couple of months (with partner-based coding too...)
The work is always brilliant, it works, it is incredible - but there are two problems:
1. You have to be at the same concentration level as I and my partner were at during the time we wrote it to understand the code. No one doing maintenence would be at that concentration level. This includes me.
2. The comments in the code were written at that same concentration level, and so they were too arcane to be useful - as an example, "the rising edge of the signal is needed, and the motif button press is at 270 degrees from it in the sequence in the clause, so rotate another 90 degrees by adding a not". Yes, this does describe what I did - but would it help anyone who is reading the comment?
So, I would say that you can do 80 hours a week on a one-time effort - but you will not be able to maintain it - even if you have code reviews, because everyone will be in the same charged state. For games that don't sell, this will work. For games that do sell, it will result in the need to do a complete rewrite every time a new feature is added that is not segregated to to a completely new part of the game (or website, or configuration tool, etc...).

Sleep deprivation is an enemy

Studies show conclusively that lack of sleep is detrimental to problem solving. Even more important, sleep HELPS problem solving. You brain will actually work out issue in your sleep. Which is why "sleeping" on the problem is actually a legitimate problem solving skill.

How about number of hours per day sustained?

Everyone is going to be different here, but I go on number of hours per *day* rather than per week. I find I can work 10 hours per day, up to 12 if the work is easy on the brain and keep going. If I go beyond that, I need a day off every 5 or less the longer I work.

Important for me is to get my sleep. If I'm working long enough that I can't get close to 8 hours, my useful working time goes down rapidly. Next most important is to get at least a couple of hours away doing something else - a game, movie, book etc. By the time you add your travel time, eating, etc you have 12 hours max useful work time.

It's pathetic that EA can't get their asses sued off for treating people like this (and have to pay big time compensation). This, in the sue happy States where you can sue oh so easily for other things...

Short Answer: Yes (but try 120 hrs/week)

We were the company that coined the term Internet Time. How did we do it, by sleeping at the office and working close to 120 hours a week. Was it healthy? No. Was it smart? Probably not. Did we produce a good product? You tell me. We wrote Netscape Navigator 1.0 in less than 6 months time. (Please don't confuse it with Navigator 3 & 4, which was a very different team) But there was a catch. We had all written a browser before. We were not trying to dream up a new product completely from scratch. We had a good idea from the start of what we wanted to build. Those set of circumstances don't happen very often. If I was tasked with building a new product that had never been attempted before, I would never try and work that many hours. Good design does not coexist well with exhaustion. There are plenty of other reasons not to work crazy hours as well, one of them is "having a life"... :lou

Depends on how those 80 hours are being used.

I think it is a matter of how those 80 hours are being burned. If you sit at your computer desk and work those hours all the way through for the whole 16 hour day, then yes, your performance will degrade even within the first day, let alone towards the end of the week.

It probably becomes a matter of cycling. How many hours are you overheating as opposed to working at optimal levels?

For me, I can chug at the desk for almost 16 hours straight. Take 5 minutes every 4-6 hours for a restroom break and to get something to drink and you're set.

However, that isn't optimal. I wouldn't be able to, nor would I want to, do that for a whole week. I would burn out and then need to go offline for a few days.

If you take that same 16 hours per day and break it up into 3 hour work windows, you have 3 hours of work, 30 minutes to 1 hour of kick-back, and then three hours of work. Granted, you lose out on four hours of actual work, but you are able to partially "reset" your mental state every three hours.

That allows you to clear your palate, so to speak, so that you can prevent yourself from going into a burn-out mode of working. You work three hours on the code, go splash yourself, get some snacks, and maybe catch a 30 minute cartoon or game and hit the code again.

Better yet, you do the three hours, and during your 1 hour break, you look over other bits of code, references, sketch outlines, and physically and mentally shift gears before going back into the work mode.

The other end of it is that you do need to crash.

Working 16 hours a day, assuming you get a full 8 hours of sleep, leaves you with no time to eat dinner or breakfast. That means the normal "breakfast", work, "dinner", sleep routine doesn't work. You would need to keep yourself fed throughout the day, in order to get your 8 hours as well as getting your 16 hours.

The problem with people who pull the 16 hours is that they then go and pursue other activities after that. This results in a lowering of their nightly sleep and a progressively more draining day. End result? Constant tiredness, more caffeine, and degradation in work quality.

In both cases, you're getting your 80 hour week, but in one case, you are actually getting more quality work out of it rather than shoddy work which will require time and effort to debug and fix.

If you work 80 hours that week, but need to spend the next week correcting the errors and bugs, you really haven't gained as much as you thought you did.

If a company was serious about pulling 16 hour days for their employees, they should really think about on-site housing, exercise programs, and time management/stress relief schedules. The longer you need people to work, the more you need to ensure that they are in top shape and form to do that work for those kinds of hours.

RE: Can People Really Program 80+ Hours a Week?

"Does EA sprinkle magic pixie dust on their serfs to get around this problem"

I'm guessing, but I'll bet they tell them that programmers are a dime-a-dozen, and there's 100 starving programmers ready to take their place if they don't toe the line. At least, that's what they told me at my last job.

"or are the PHB's so technically challenged they don't realize what is going on?"

Partly. For the most part, they don't understand what it takes to make good software. Mostly, they don't care what it takes to make good software. They don't think that far ahead. They're looking at the next quarter, or maybe the next 6 months. What happens when customers start complaining about buggy software doesn't enter into their decision. That's way too far in the future.

"This whole 'death march' mentality seems absolutely crazy to me as a programmer,"

Not when you realize what their priorities are. The goal is to get a product out as soon as possible. The ones that actually try to rationalize this mentality say that it is a choice between putting out garbage or going bankrupt. They always think there'll be time/money to fix it later.
There are good ones around, but they seem to be fewer and fewer in number.
Contemplate the fact that more and more software is being done like this, and be afraid, very afraid. The next time you get on a commercial airline flight, imagine that the software for their in-flight systems might have been produced that way. If you used an electronic voting machine, think about the fact that the software for the machine you used was probably produced that way.
Is this sustainable? Of course not. But the folks making these kinds of decisions figure they'll have their bonus and be long gone before anyone has to pay the consequences.

It really just can't be done.

The U.S. military has tested hundreds of thousands of people to see what they can do after getting X number of hours sleep each night for Y number of days with X having values less than 6 (often down to 0) and Y often having values greater than 14. We are talking young, healthy people who have been screened for many medical conditions, who get lots of exercise and a healthy diet before beginning such tests, (and I specifically don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that the average coder can withstand more physical stress without risk of permanent health damage than long range recon, seals, or green berets).
Not only that, but in addition to simulated life or death situations, the military has seen the effects of sleep deprivation on a number of the realest of real life or death situations, some of which could also have profound bottom line impact on the whole institution,(so somehow I also don't think motivation is somehow higher for coders).
Any management team that expects positive results from 80 hour+ weeks for 6 weeks or more is expecting its people to outperform all those whimpy Airborne Rangers and such, and if they are really crazy enough to think that's possible, need to be encouraged to personally go tell some group of Huaah!~ types off. That should take care of the problem.

Creativity and Sleep

A long time ago I talked about this subject with my brother, at the time a pilot in the Strategic Air Command. I was working with a group of people who were acutely interested in precisely same question as the poster--is ther a point at which extra hours != additional useful code? As it happens, the question has been extensively studied, and answered, by the U.S. military.

There is a long-established relationship between the ability to handle abstraction (such as OOP) and the ability to do spatial reasoning. The U.S. Air Force, in the 1950s and 1960s, did a lot of research in the relationship between sleep deprivation and spatial reasoning--they were alarmed about the accident rate of aircrews after very long missions. If you're at the controls of a KC-10 tanker, a slight touch with your fingers will affect the rate at which the aircraft wheel bogies forty feet beneath you and a hundred feet back will descend to the ground. If you're sleepy and groggy, you're much more likely to misjudge your altitude or your rate of descent. Hit the runway a bit too hard, or a bit too early, and the landing gear can collapse--and you and your crew will disappear into a ball of flames.

The result? The Air Force instituted something called "mandatory crew rest"--you fly X hours, and you must get at least eight hours of sleep (in addition to debriefing, flight planning, etc.). No matter if there is a global crisis and you are rarin' to fly, if you haven't had your mandatory rest, you stay in your bunk until you do.

So what does that mean for us?
As I wrote above, there is a strong relationship between abstract reasoning and spatial reasoning. The U.S.A.F. has proved that sleep deprivation diminishes your ability to do spatial reasoning; ergo, sleep deprivation diminishes your ability to do abstract reasoning. Based on twenty-plus years in the business, that makes sense: time and again I've seen programmers try to pull all-nighters to finish up a project, only to fall further behind because they wrote gibberish all night long.

But wait, there's more...
Sleep deprivation isn't the only issue: dehydration will also affect your ability to do spatial reasoning (trivia fact: baseball batting averages are lower in the second half of a daytime doubleheader; because the players have been out in the hot sun, baking under dark-colored baseball caps. They get dehydrated, which limits their ability to hit a curveball.)

Bottom line:
Wanna be an effective project leader? Send people home at a reasonable time; provide bottled water or spring water; and discourage (or at least don't encourage) coffee or other caffeine-based sleep substitutes. Do not run a death march project in order to look macho; and be prepared to fend off the Guys in Ties who think a death march atmosphere is necessary.

Sigh--I'm drinking WAY too much coffee these days....

30 hours coding a week- max!

I would push the boat out even further and say that 30 hours is about the maximum weekly programming effort (ie actually coding, not just being at work) that can be indefinately sustained. Every once in a while you might manage a bit more, but you cannot sustain that effort week in week out.

Programming, requires a lot of thinking about programming in addition to the actual coding. I would say that this is a 50-50 ratio. Sometimes you solve a problem when you are at home making dinner, riding your bike, playing with your kid, or having a beer with your buddies. Take into account meetings and communication with coworkers and suddenly 30 hours a week coding is the absolute max.

Programmers disease

This is something that I noticed very early in my life (while I was still at school) and avoided ever since. A friend of my father, who is a journalist at a major german computer magazine for about fifteen years or so, once told me that (almost) every job has one or more typical diseases.

He said that the typical programmer diseases are too much stress, pains from sitting around all day in a wrong stance (? sorry, I'm not a native english speaker) and gaining fat from too few sports ;-)

I've been able to avoid the first and the last but suffer from sitting in a wrong position ;-) Granted, it's sometimes very hard to avoid the stress, especially when the project is in the ending phase and the release date is nearing. But apart from that there is few need for stress. I've seen on my coworkers that very often people impose stress on themselves or let their bosses impose stress on them. And most of the time this stress is unnecessary and can be avoided.

(This is why I never wanted to be a games programmer although I'd really like to write games: that industry was too much stress ten years ago and it seems that it got worse)

I think that if the work is imposing too much stress on you, you really should think about looking for another employer. I know very well that this sounds so much easier than it is, and that some people don't have the opportunity to change employer easily. But there are times when one has to ask oneself: what's more important ? My health or my great payment ? Wouldn't a job that's not as well payed but is more fun/healthier be a better deal ?

Re:Every play an EA game?

Yeah, what does anyone expect?

"EA games: question everything"

Paranoia is not an uncommon response to lack of sleep from overwork :-)