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This doesn't exactly seem like the healthiest (or most efficient) routine. > A pattern emerged in my days during this period. Get up, get washed and dressed, w

This doesn't exactly seem like the healthiest (or most efficient) routine. > A pattern emerged in my days during this period. Get up, get washed and dressed, wash down a couple of caffeine tablets with some strong coffee, pick up a red bull, a coke and some cereal bars on my way into the office. Once at work I’d be at my desk non-stop; all meals would be eaten at my desk, though sometimes I’d not eat at all. When I did eat, it would usually mean a sandwich from the supermarket for lunch. Work would often provide dinner, invariably takeout. Sugary caffeinated drinks and sweets would sustain me for the rest of the time. Working 80 hour weeks is not okay, but working 40 hour weeks is also probably not okay when you're relying on this sort of sustenance. Thanks incredibly for sharing your experience and helping build such a renowned game. Hopefully people can take away from your experiences strategies to avoid a similar fate!

inDigiNeous 10y ago
Yeah I dont understand this either as a programmer. Maybe this works in a big team better, but alone at least there's no way I can work even 8 hours productively every day, realistically it's more like 3-4 hours of intense thinking, maybe on a good day I can do 6-7 hours, and sometimes even more, but continuing this pattern will really affect the level of code and problem solving in a major way. Better to take breaks, do something else, just relax for a day or two even if nothing is coming out, and then continue when it comes naturally.
- Joeri 10y ago
  They might have shipped sooner had they let everyone work normal hours. It's not just that the studies agree sustained crunch is a bad idea, I've seen several times in person that sustained crunch beyond the first few weeks lowers overall productivity. People start goofing off, or just staring at code without making much progress, or writing huge mountains of code when a little stream of code would have sufficed with more forethought. And the code that they do write they have to revisit later to fix all the bugs caused by sloppy coding.
  - Retric 10y ago
    I have personally seen someone in crunch replace a few terse lines written in 15 minutes that worked. With pages of boilerplate code and a few dozen files that must have taken days. His response, I did not understand what you did. Ask? I mean no wonder that team was working 80 hour weeks. If you stop thinking then even very simple problems become monumental challenges.
    - aedron 10y ago
      Whenever I work more than 10-11 hours, I usually come back to the code the next day and wonder WTF I was thinking. Problems with straightforward solutions solved with large amounts of garbage code, wonky designs, lots of stuff that just gets thrown out wholesale. It is literally counterproductive.
  - thenomad 10y ago
    I believe there have been studies confirming this phenomenon. The phrase they used was "undertime" - what happens after "overtime".
- ido 10y ago
  It depends on what you do, when you're in more of a lead developer/team leader type position you don't only code on your own but have to routinely help/direct other devs all the time & it's easier to slip into working a lot longer (partially it's that you keep getting fresh problems, another part is that you aren't working on these problems alone). I can easily imagine leading even a small-ish team of 5 to 10 other programmers who don't all start and finish the day at the exact same moment (so each may be working 9 hour days but it stretches over a 12 hours period) can make you "naturally" work longer hours if you don't keep an eye out for it.
- eru 10y ago
  In a corporate team, you don't work 8 hours productively every day. You have meetings.

inDigiNeous 10y ago

Yeah I dont understand this either as a programmer. Maybe this works in a big team better, but alone at least there's no way I can work even 8 hours productively every day, realistically it's more like 3-4 hours of intense thinking, maybe on a good day I can do 6-7 hours, and sometimes even more, but continuing this pattern will really affect the level of code and problem solving in a major way. Better to take breaks, do something else, just relax for a day or two even if nothing is coming out, and then continue when it comes naturally.

Joeri 10y ago
They might have shipped sooner had they let everyone work normal hours. It's not just that the studies agree sustained crunch is a bad idea, I've seen several times in person that sustained crunch beyond the first few weeks lowers overall productivity. People start goofing off, or just staring at code without making much progress, or writing huge mountains of code when a little stream of code would have sufficed with more forethought. And the code that they do write they have to revisit later to fix all the bugs caused by sloppy coding.
- Retric 10y ago
  I have personally seen someone in crunch replace a few terse lines written in 15 minutes that worked. With pages of boilerplate code and a few dozen files that must have taken days. His response, I did not understand what you did. Ask? I mean no wonder that team was working 80 hour weeks. If you stop thinking then even very simple problems become monumental challenges.
  - aedron 10y ago
    Whenever I work more than 10-11 hours, I usually come back to the code the next day and wonder WTF I was thinking. Problems with straightforward solutions solved with large amounts of garbage code, wonky designs, lots of stuff that just gets thrown out wholesale. It is literally counterproductive.
- thenomad 10y ago
  I believe there have been studies confirming this phenomenon. The phrase they used was "undertime" - what happens after "overtime".
ido 10y ago
It depends on what you do, when you're in more of a lead developer/team leader type position you don't only code on your own but have to routinely help/direct other devs all the time & it's easier to slip into working a lot longer (partially it's that you keep getting fresh problems, another part is that you aren't working on these problems alone). I can easily imagine leading even a small-ish team of 5 to 10 other programmers who don't all start and finish the day at the exact same moment (so each may be working 9 hour days but it stretches over a 12 hours period) can make you "naturally" work longer hours if you don't keep an eye out for it.
eru 10y ago
In a corporate team, you don't work 8 hours productively every day. You have meetings.