Ask Slashdot: Does Your Work Schedule Make You Unproductive? 311
debingjos writes "Management at my company seems to think that our developers can get extra work done if they work extra long days. However, as one of the devs in question, I don't agree. When I've been coding for eight hours, my pool of concentration is exhausted. Working overtime either fails to produce any extra code, or the quality of the code is very bad. What is the community's opinion on this? This can be broken out further into several questions: What are the maximum number of hours you can work in a day/week and still be reasonably productive? When you absolutely must work beyond that limit, what steps do you take to minimize degradation of quality? If you're able to structure your time differently from the typical 9-5 schedule, what method works best for you? Finally, how do you communicate the quality problems to management?"
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
"Does Your Work Schedule Make You Unproductive?" - no but Slashdot and TheChive sure do
Oh come now! You're Slashdotting is counted toward Professional Development. Same as for when the execs slip out for an afternoon of golf.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
1- Manage MILESTONES, not MINUTES ;-)
2- Quality problems are why there is a design spec and QA engineering. If these are too "old school" for your management and methodology, expect the beating to continue. That means code coverage and quality will be measured by your customers.
Used to (Score:5, Informative)
Entirely dependent on the project. If I was intensely interested, I could work much longer.
There is no 'absolutely must'. If you have a limit, it's a limit. It's unhealthy to push past that, people have died.
Four long days followed by three off.
Walk up, say "Hey....
Who cares what the community thinks? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a well-researched topic with hard data available. And it's pretty unambiguously and consistently the case that the hard data show that working extra hours results, not just in lower productivity per hour, but lower productivity overall. Which is why people who start pushing for extra hours can't seem to catch up -- they're making it worse rather than better.
Your managers are trying to find out just how much gasoline they have to pour on this fire to put it out, and I don't think you can reasonably expect them to get smarter.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Informative)
Why? Most programmers are most productive in 45-90 minute sprints with 30-45 minute breaks in between. Slashdot is a great way to fill those 30-45 minute breaks. Other good ways include walking, conversations with co-workers, lunch and bathroom breaks. There's no reason that when used in moderation, Slashdot can't be part of a very healthy development process. However just like you can't eat only cupcakes and be healthy, you can't only spend your time on Slashdot and be productive.
Re: Really? (Score:5, Informative)
There are a lot of jokes about morning and night people, but studies show there is validity to this. I learned to work with this when teaching special ed and later, when I ran my own software company, where I did all the programming, I saw a dramatic illustration of some of those issues.
Morning people get up and are perky and ready to start. However, they're the ones who often need a nap in the afternoon and work well with an 8 hour day, but do not do well with marathon sessions. Night people do not start quickly. They wake up and need time to adjust to the world again and often are not ready to really focus until the afternoon. But they gain in strength and focus over time. They can often work marathon sessions, working all through the night and into the next morning.
I found that when I was coding and could work on my own schedule, I could get some work done in the afternoon and this is when I set things up, did simpler tasks, and caught up on things. But my real work hours started about 8:00 pm, when I could start focusing and I would often work through until sunrise or longer. 18 hour coding sessions were not unusual for me, but, of course, if I did a few in a row because I was working on something difficult, then I'd need several days to just recover. But I might be able to do 5 days straight of mega-sessions if needed. It's also worth noting this was in my 40s, not when I was some over-energetic teen or 20-something. In fact, in one month, when I was over 45, I did more all-nighters (with good code as a result) than I did in all my time in high school and college combined.
It does vary according to the person. Forcing night people to try to work in the morning will always be an issue for them and will not produce the good code they can produce. Forcing morning people who tend not to do well in marathons to stay for 10 hour days four times a week is just as bad.
Corporations don't understand these things, which is one reason I never wanted to be involved with any larger corporations. If you want coders to do their best work, you can't regiment them and dictate how they work. You need to let them find their style. Let them work on their own schedule. If they need music, let them have it. If they need silence, find a way to make quiet places available. Some need neat work spaces, others need chaos.