Do Long Work Hours Affect Code Quality?

tooTired asks: "At my company the owner is heavily implying that the development staff needs to start working longer hours and weekends to shorten the time-frames on our current projects. The exact quote is 'These 8 hour days have to stop, we need to be working 15 hours a day and weekends, balls to the wall.' We are heavily under-staffed even with my multiple attempts to show the owner that we need more resources. My general feeling is that long hours is generally a symptom of poor project management, and not something to be sought after. I wanted to ask the Slashdot community their opinions on how working long hours during the week and weekends affects the quality of the code they produce, and the overall success of the project." A large reason why many in this industry find themselves working long hours and weekends is that management makes unreasonable expectations and deadlines. Are there ways of communicating to management that long hours to rush a project to completion is not the way to complete a successful project? Update: 08/30 23:11 GMT by C :Grammatical errors in title, corrected. Sorry about that.

Walking Papers

[forkboy]

If the unemployment rate isn't too bad in your area, I'd be telling them to suck your balls.

There's no excuse for an employer to consistently demand 15+ hour days and weekends. Once in a great while, when an important deadline is coming, sure it's a reasonable request, but a consistent basis? No way man...don't let yourself get trapped into that. You'll burn out and find yourself embittered against working at all. (I'm speaking from experience)

It sounds like this company is a poorly managed failing startup and probably isn't long for the world anyway. Quit while you're ahead.

I think it matters

[Azureash]

As a developer, your opinion probably isn't going to make a difference. In my experience, some project managers will give you lip service about your input into project timelines, but in the end all that matters is what the sales/marketing person told the customer. Most of the time (and especially in times like these) the slave drivers get the most recognition from the upper management.
Is it right? Absolutely not.
Does it produce better products. Absolutely not.
But just try to explain this to a CFO who wants revenue THIS quarter.

Prediction: you will get fired

[1010011010]

Executives don't like reality. They are all about wish fulfillment. When your project(s) are not completed by their deadlines, you will be fired. You will be the one who has to pay, because you were the one repeatedly pointing out that you needed more resources, given the requirements and deadlines. You contradicted your executive's worldview. In any competition between reality and an executive's world-view, the executive wins, in the short term. Reality always wins in the long term.

tell him...

[Anonymous Coward]

tell him to work the same hours you do.
That usually works.

If that doesn't talk to him about overtime pay, and how some states require it.

And if neither of those work, then start a programmers union.

Get a new job. . .

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

I hate to say it but

GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!

I mean good lord man, you're telling me every symptom of every business that I've seen go under locally. The whole "balls to the walls" syndrome is often more of a "we're cutting budgets that we really shouldn't" syndrome. I fully expect that you'll find that the same managers that are willing to have YOU (not them) put in 15 hour days are also the ones willing to say "sure we can do X+Y at the budget for just X" to his higher ups just to look better.

Spend The Time Wisely

[nick_davison]

While, short term, it can work, it sounds as if the owner thinks this is the way to simply work from now on, regardless. That being the case, he really is demonstrating massive failings as a workforce manager. Even if you guys ship the next product or two early, and keep the company afloat for a few more months, in time the moral effect, the exhaustion and all the rest will kick in and he'll be getting worse, not better, productivity. If he's really making those kinds of shortsighted decisions, and he's the owner, the company is going to sink one way or another anyway - it just might eek out a few more months at the expense of a bunch of burnt out programmers.

My advice would be to use those seven extra hours in front of a PC to tidy up your resume and get it out there. You are going to be looking for a job soon enough, you might as well get the headstart.

Ask yourself, how many dotcom tales of people agreeing to work without pay for a while; work long hours; all the rest of it, you've heard. Now, how many of those companies actually survived by doing that? Next to none?

Re:Coders VS Management...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

projects aren't pumped out in a timely manner, the business will go under

Perhaps management should listen to the developers when creating schedules and product release dates, instead of the marketers?

Get out while you can

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Every project that goes down that path ends with the development team being laid off.

Don't walk away from this situation, run.

There are projects and there are emergencies

[Anonymous Coward]

I manage engineers. I've been an engineer. It's hard when you don't have the headcount you need. It takes alot of communication and socialization on a manager's part to have the process for booking resources institutionalized along with the process for trading projects and features with your customers (internal and external). You have to be able to say here's what we're all doing, it's exactly according to the plan we presented you at the beginning of the quarter and which you agreed to. If you want us to do something else, that's fine but you pick what we drop from our project schedule. The time to communicate and educate the organization about why it's bad to purposely put people in high workload situations is not when they want are asking you to take on a high workload. You engender this knowlege during a non-panic time and around actual failure cases. Also, when upper management walks through the engineer area and sees every out (for whatever reason) and say's it 'feels' like people aren't working hard, there must be 2 responses: First, I don't manage based on 'feelings', I manage based on facts. Let's talk about what you think is not getting done and we can address concrete issues. Second (and reserve this on a case/case basis), if upper management is walking through wondering why few people are in their cube, it may be proper to respond: "they're probably out interviewing".

Long Hours don't work - simple answer

[jdrumgoole]

The XP (Extreme Programming not those other guys) have it right here. Programming done right is a task which requires deep concentration for long periods of time and that's just the pure coding part. To actually create and innovate demands that the lateral side of the brain is firing on all channels as well. That just isn't going to happen with permanently exhausted staff. On all the projects I've managed the deal is 40hrs a week max, proper scheduling with serious input from the development team and lets break the bad news early (from the ground up) if there are problems.

Now if we step back from the coal face and take a longer view the question you have to ask is do we expect our programming staff to pull insane hours every project? Hell no, they'll leave or in an even worse scenario they'll stay and their productivity will drop below the Z. Your fella sounds like he's either new to the game or just wrong for the job. Your can't afford to burn out a development team per project even in these down turn days.

Programming is an essentially human activity and to get the best out of your real software (the fleshy pink stuff) you need to take a long term view, but I can understand how their are many managers out there who think productivity = longer hours and thats it.

So use the simple arguments, people who are tired make more mistakes, are less likely to confer with peers, get upset when confronted or corrected, get angry more quickly and generally do a bad job (no surprises here).

Joe.

Who cares?

[countach]

Who cares if working 15 hour days "works"? Sending kids down the coal mines "works" if your goal is to get coal, but you wouldn't be dumb enough to do it would you? Tell management to get stuffed.

Get a life.

[Bongo]

I wanted to ask the Slashdot community their opinions on how working long hours during the week and weekends affects the quality of the code they produce, and the overall success of the project.

Forget about code quality. Forget success. Your life is too short.

There's nothing wrong with having a modest carreer, and enjoying your work. But just be straight about one thing: when you are 60, you will in all likelyhood look back and see it as a waste.

People who are happily married live longer. Having a relationship takes as much time as a full time job .

You cannot have a relationship with your partner on 20 minutes a day of discussing the bills, the chores, or over a sandwich. It's a full time commitment. It takes spending quality time together, and not just quality, but quantity also.

Wanna have children? You think they're going to turn out great if you're never there to be there for them? You want them to feel loved, and nourished, and mentored? Then you have to be there. Not at work, not on business trips, not at the mall. But there, with them.

You want your parents to feel loved by their children (ie. you) when they grow old, and you're all they've got? Then you have to spend time with them.

Time is all we have. And all we really have, that really counts, is each other.

Geeks are probably the last people to get this, but if you really knew that a truck was going to hit you tomorrow, you would find that your real desire would be to spend the time with those who are close to you. Your job, money, and gizmos are meaningless by comparison.

Work, and prosper. Don't be a slave. Have balance. Be sweet to each other. Don't let some stupid and misguided manager tell you that you have to kill yourself to "succeed". Success is measured in happiness, not paycheck or accomplishments.

If you have the talent to work on class projects, then fine. If you don't, then just let it go. You can still be happy. Truly happy. Just open your eyes and see that life is more than a resume. You have the capacity to love and you can learn to use it to create happiness.

Be true to yourself.

Re:I am not owned by a company.

[evilpenguin]

If you worked in programming or engineering in the 1980's, you are conditioned to fear for your job. There was a long drought in these fields in the 1980's because massive downsizing by the "big, stable" companies threw thousands of competent professionals on the market at one time. If you are younger than this, you are used to a job market so hot that you can just walk into another job. With the economic slowdown of the last two years or so (the dot com bust, followed by the post 9/11 uncertainty) I'm not sure what the market is like. Clearly, if employers are feeling willing to demand this, they must think the market is tighter than it has been.

If I were in a more cynical mood, I would suggest that you contact a lawyer and see if "balls to the wall" was evidence of a sexually hostile workplace.

Personally, I think software development management is of generally poor quality. This is due to a combination of management ignorance, poor engineering practice, the intangible nature of the product (its much easier to explain sensibly why designing, tooling up for, and manufacturing a widget takes a long time), and underestimation by the rank and file developer. If I had the magic bullet for this problem, I would not still be a mortgage-holding software developer, I would be a very highly paid consultant and regular pundit quoted in the trade rags.

I'd walk out the door too, if I knew I could.

Tip for the youngsters: Buy less house than you want. Have six months salary in the bank at all times. Then you can storm out in high dudgeon like antis0c suggests...

Re:Sometimes it is...

[Strych9]

> working longer hours is good.
The question is good for whom?

I guess it ultimately depends on do you enjoy / believe in what you do? Has the company treated you well up to this point? How will the hours affect the rest of your life, assuming you have one?

I've worked for some of the big boys in the industry, and all I can say about long hours is that once it starts, it doesn't stop. Management gets used to this "new" amazing level of productivity and it is then expected to get anywhere up to a point where you can spend enormous amounts of time at work to maybe get that 1% extra on your bonus, and a potential decrease should you decide to take normal hours again.

You may make a decent salary but at the end of the day you work for but peanuts per hour. If you have a family what is the cost/ hour of not being there because that extra subroutine needs tweaking?

Unless what you do directly affects someone on life support, it isn't all that important.

just my 2 cents

And added compensation?

[Matey-O]

that $80,000 a year job at 40 hours a week is $40 bucks an hour. That sounds pretty good, right?

Work _80_ hours a week and you're only making _$20_ an hour. You're getting robbed if you're really worth $40 per.

Re:Spend The Time Wisely

[Stephen Samuel]

Apple, CIsco, Palm, etc, worked their employees long hours, but it was long pampered hours. -- and most of those employees had stock options which meant that they shared in the profits that came from those long hours.

This guy looks like he's walking into a sweatshop environment.. Long hours, little recognition, bad project planning.....

It's the bad project planning that really gets to me. It's the expecting the employees to be slaves and happy about it. It's the sinking ship, and you better find a raft now feeling to this whole scenario that has me wanting to scream.

• Get you resume out there NOW!

Either everybody burns out before the project's finished, or they get fired after it's finished, or they're going to expect you to do it again with the next project.

In either case, you'll be short a job, a life, or both.

Re:Agreed

[iabervon]

Solving the problems underlying the code is the interesting part. The rest is just typing. Solutions to problems just come to you while you're sitting around after being exposed to the issues involved in the code. Your subconscious gets engaged and will come up with ideas creatively. Sitting there increasing the size of the program actually inhibits this, because you're distracted by the details and can't think of the abstract concepts.

Development work, therefore, is done in the 16 hours/day that you're not there. It will therefore halve your output (in terms of solutions to problems) if you're only not there 9 hours/day. If the job actually demands 15 hours/day of sitting at the keyboard working on it, it's data entry, not programming, because you don't have enough time to think about the project.

I generally get to work with my head full of ideas, and leave when my head is empty and I have no more thoughts about the project. (Actually, I'm lazy, and leave a while afterwards. But I stop getting anything useful done when my head is empty.)

Debugging, on the other hand, works differently. The problems are small and self-contained, and your time is spent searching through the codebase, not thinking about how the project should go. There are a lot of bugs you'll only find by actually staring at the code, because the bug comes from some code not doing what you think it does; thinking about what is does won't help. There are still bugs that you won't find until you relax, though, so you can't go on forever. It's somewhat reasonable to have a 20-hour day on occasion, where you're fixing a lot of things that don't quite work, but you won't improve the functionality of the project much, just whether it works or not.

"That's a good question. I'll have to sleep on it." (Three weeks pass) "Why haven't you answered my question?" "I haven't gotten a chance to sleep."

On the other hand, a 15-hour work day could be reasonable if your work has really comfortable couches...

Re: Agreed

[BoneFlower]

". I don't remember the exact number (and it probably varies by trade), but it was certainly less than the 15 hours/day that his idiot ^w boss ^w idiot boss is wanting."

The average person needs 8 hours of sleep a night. With 15 hours of work, that leaves one hour(on both ends of the sleep cycle, combined!) to shower, shave, and commute. Granted, many people can go with less, but over time it will take a toll. 15 hours+ is fine in the rare extreme circumstance, but not as an everyday thing. How many people at this place will get fired for falling asleep on the job? Quite a few. And several others will start getting sick from the long hours, junk food eaten to stay up... In todays job market, leaving the company may not be an option...

Hows this?

[emitseum]

I was working at company...we put in the long hours, some all nighters. My boss used to work 3 days in a row with no sleep. Now he is dead. Heart Attack. He was 38. He looked at least 50. Sort of puts things in perspective.

Another Prediction: you will get fired ANYWAY

[evocate]

Why does the owner need the development staff to work 15 hour days and weekends? I bet it's because the business plan or market position sucks and the owner is a stubborn brick who cannot accept his failures and shortcomings. He "needs" you to do the impossible because if you don't then his failure at business planning will be on display for all to see. Of course, he won't see that his stupid plan failed. He will see that his development staff failed him, and he will fire them in disgust. Do yourself a huge favor and find something better to do.

Business Men Care

[BortQ]

Well yes, technically speaking children mining coal does work. But you have to look at it from an efficiency standpoint. Children just aren't as strong as, and can't carry as much as adults.

That's why all respectable businesses have switched from child labor to third-world labor.

Re:From a manager's view, not a developer's

[coltrane99]

You know, that's just great.

But I have found that these kind of blown schedules always result from:

(1) Misstatements of requirements
(2) Misapplication of estimates (i.e. applying coding estimates blindly without thinking about what other overhead exists in your process).

If you are a project manager, it's your job to come up with good estimates. If your programmers estimate poorly, it's your job to track that and adjust their estimates.

Simple Math

[MisterBlister]

Your boss is asking you to take a paycut of almost 50%. (Nearly double the hours, same pay). What would you say if he came in and said you were going to take this big of a salary cut directly? Whatever your answer to that is your answer to working these longer hours.

Me? My answer would be 'fuck no', but I do realize not everyone is a position to say that.

Re:Yup

[Lemmy Caution]

You do not understand how a "race to the bottom" happens.

As long as there is no industry or regulatory standard for how long people in a given job in a given industry works, and as long as sales people get commissions for promising more, faster to customers (and not getting contracts unless they do) then more, rather then fewer, jobs will be in permanent crisis mode. It's a sort of inflationary economy. Only when there is universal expectation that any given worker is going to work 40 hours, then bids will go out with that assumption. Otherwise, there's a race to hire only those who can work 50, 60 or more hours a week - and if you can't, you get pushed out of your career by someone with no family or other life outside work.

Re: Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

The other problem is that if you are constantly working overtime, you'll be doing more slacking off and spending more time chit-chatting with co-workers so it looks like you've put in a lot of hours but really you've done squat.

But even more importantly, if you're always giving 200%, when it comes to crunch time and they say give it all you got, you'll have nothing left to give.

Re:Agreed - I respectfully refute the following:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the post above tried to make a clear, intellgent point about this and other things, pointing out in summation that economic freedom must not supercede freedom.

It got marked as a troll, 2 times, shows you the thinking of the idiots on slashdot.

Any company which does this doomed

[nighthawk]

Can you say Chernobyl? That is what happens when you sufer from lack of sleep.

Any software company which gets itself into this mess is SERIOUSLY SCREWED. If they were that far off on their software estimates, there have to be LOTS of other places where they have no clue. Like their current financial position go work for someone with a clue.

Thier money for your life?!?!!?

[coldnight]

'These 8 hour days have to stop, we need to be working 15 hours a day and weekends, balls to the wall.'

I would reply with "No way." Here's why:

I have several friends who code or produce other computer output for thier income. Lets call them Mark and Jason.

Mark is 32 - produces computer artwork and does computer imaging and interactive systems. He's 33 right now. Two years ago, this time I was helping him recover from Quadruple heart bypass sugery. Yes, at 31. Now, he may have been predisposed, genetics, etc etc. However, when you work *double* or almost double the hours that everyone else regularly does, you end up with a life style that puts your health at serious risk.

This request to work alot more will undoubtedly increase your stress - another factor in heart disease. I cannot say how much the "go-go-go and everything is on your shoulders" lifestyle has hurt my friends.

Jason is a systems manager, Email, web, DB, whatever - he's your guy. He is the proud father of twin boys, just a year old. Know where Jason is, this very very moment? ICU. No, not ICQ. ICU. He came through his *double* bypass surgery early yesterday evening.

There is no amount of money or anything else that is worth your health and your familys son/daughter/wife/husband/father/mother.

There has been talk of IT unions. Maybe its a good idea... Maybe we'd better think about this before its (almost) too late for more of us.

Here's a novel idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you get rid of your 2 SUVs, your boat, and your 3000 square foot house so that you don't have to put up with shit like this from your employer? Learn to live with less, and you can work fewer hours doing something you enjoy more. Voluntary simplicity is the way to go.

Re:Funny, you should mention this...

[wilson_c]

I am working on what could be the largest project of my life... I have a 4 month old son I rarely see.

Shouldn't your son be the largest project of your life? Whatever you're doing cannot be as important as he is.

Why exactly are you sticking with this job? You've already pointed out that you're not being paid well for it since you're salaried. If you're going to find another job, do it now. With the effort you've given, you don't owe them anything.

Claim your life back before you turn into a sad cliche of an absent father.

You're gonna get replaced by H1B's anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it. The American programmer is dead. I work for one of the largest companies in the world, and I'm on a project like this. Luckily, my part in it is easy, so my part is done. But the poor shmucks in the other groups are working 16 hour days and weekends, which is kind of ironic on a weekend called "Labor Day Weekend". Here's why.

For those not in the US, "H1B" refers to a paragraph in the immigration law which allows people to live in the US if they have a desired technical skill. This opened the floodgates for "H1B Visas" which allows foreign programmers into the US.

1. Management sees dollar signs when they realize that you can pay H1B's next to nothing and they'll love it for the privilege of living and working in the US.

2. Management realizes that they can force H1B's to work as long as they want because they can always send the "defective" H1B back to India or whereever and get another one.

3. H1B's have no family in the US to get in the way of work.

4. H1B's are motivated, but not very experienced, so you need a lot of them. Actually, dollar-for-dollar, you need more H1B manpower than experienced American programmer manpower to accomplish the same task, but that doesn't matter because executives focus on "headcount expense". That is, if the cost of one headcount is low, they don't care how many headcount you have, since there is no objective way to argue that one H1B headcount equals some fraction of an American programmer headcount.

5. The focus of new development is NEVER excellence. It is always to be first-to-market. So if the thing doesn't crash very often, ship it. H1B's don't mind very much if their product doesn't work perfectly. I think American programmers strive for perfection... too much.

So quite frankly the American programmer doesn't have a future, unless programmers form a union to prevent foreign labor from entering the US. "Union" is a dirty word nowadays, and I think to programmers even more so, conjuring up images of workers dropping tools to go on coffee breaks and throwing bricks at scabs on strikes. So I doubt that a programmer's union is likely. So I'm moving into management, much as I dislike it. At least then I get to crack whips instead of having whips land on my back.

My suggestion is to think long and hard about what alternative career you should go for, because even if you leave, it will be the same everywhere else.

Re:Agreed

[sql*kitten]

Bullshit! If I employ you, and ask you to work longer for some period of time (either because you are working too slow or I'm too poor at management, or a combination of those), and you refuse to do so - you send me a very clear signal about your loyalty to the company. It doesn't matter if its your fault or mine that we need more hours from you - it is you who decide not to pull. Naturally you will not receive the same promotions and recognition as loyal employees will. You go to a judge and tell him that you're upset you didn't get the promotion just because you were illoyal to the company, you watch him laugh in your face.

Actually, in France and most of the EU, the judge will find against the employer in that case. You see, the French introduced the 35-hr week not as a quality-of-life thing, but in an attempt to counter the chronically high unemployment that France has experienced in recent decades - if people work fewer hours, the logic goes, then more will need to be hired. If an employer demands extra hours, the government doesn't care if the worker is exploited or not, what matters is the employer is ignoring the government's policy, and it's not tolerated.

Unfortunately, these laws have had the opposite effect to what was intended. Because it is so hard to fire employees - for good reason or not - employers are reluctant to hire anyone. French unemployment is been stuck at around 10%, and Germany's about the same. In the US and UK where it's easy to fire people, the risks of hiring are much lower, and unemployment is closer to 4%.