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100 hours sounds hectic. The last time I worked long hours for 2 continuous weeks and weekends I nearly quit my job the following Monday. Some sleep and a day o

by nevi-me 11y ago

100 hours sounds hectic. The last time I worked long hours for 2 continuous weeks and weekends I nearly quit my job the following Monday. Some sleep and a day off work changed my mind. It sucks when you're in rescue mode on a project. I am on a project that is going a bit like that. A part of me wishes it ends sooner than later, because even though I took a month off work, by the end of next my first week, it'll feel like I never went away. What would you recommend at the start of a project to avoid the death march? I'm struggling to find the right mix in people to help us balance our teams well. Lots of keyman dependencies which we can't handle at times. Thanks

muzani 11y ago
Almost all my death marches happened when the project is being authoritatively led by a non-engineer. An engineer's estimate is usually conservative. If someone says it'll take 2 months, it'll probably take minimum two months. If you have good engineers, they're not trying to slack off by padding estimates. Respecting project estimates go a long way. The right team also matters. In some, we had interns working on a key component. I'm not saying interns are bad, but generally you don't want grumpy, underpaid people to work overtime. The designer has to respect the engineers. If you do a design that sticks to guidelines or something like Material Design, you'll be fine. But some designers try something really weird, in order to win an award, and some of those tiny details are pointless but would take 50% of the production time. I actually did ragequit in most of those jobs. I know it sounds tantrum-y, but I'd say it rescued a lot of those projects. When you quit a well-paid job, the company immediately assumes that you have a very good reason to quit and starts listening. Then they allocate some resources, like a tester, dedicated designer, and the API guy sits with front end for those 100 hours straight.

by nevi-me 11y ago

muzani 11y ago

Almost all my death marches happened when the project is being authoritatively led by a non-engineer. An engineer's estimate is usually conservative. If someone says it'll take 2 months, it'll probably take minimum two months. If you have good engineers, they're not trying to slack off by padding estimates. Respecting project estimates go a long way. The right team also matters. In some, we had interns working on a key component. I'm not saying interns are bad, but generally you don't want grumpy, underpaid people to work overtime. The designer has to respect the engineers. If you do a design that sticks to guidelines or something like Material Design, you'll be fine. But some designers try something really weird, in order to win an award, and some of those tiny details are pointless but would take 50% of the production time. I actually did ragequit in most of those jobs. I know it sounds tantrum-y, but I'd say it rescued a lot of those projects. When you quit a well-paid job, the company immediately assumes that you have a very good reason to quit and starts listening. Then they allocate some resources, like a tester, dedicated designer, and the API guy sits with front end for those 100 hours straight.