5 ms·

> Don't get me started on the arbitrarily shifting release dates that correlate with buggy releases that we developers get angry emails about. I'm willing to b

> Don't get me started on the arbitrarily shifting release dates that correlate with buggy releases that we developers get angry emails about. I'm willing to bet that it likely causation in a majority of cases. I've been there. Business comes back with a list of wishes for the quarter. We're asked about the features as a whole, and I'm already on the fence about whether it can actually get done. We start getting granular with the stories. By the end of the first sprint's estimations, we've definitively said, "There is no way we can finish all of these by the end of the quarter." That's taken back to upper management, and the whip is cracked. Too bad. Sprint has started, and instead of a quarterly wish list, we now have hard, immobile release dates for different feature sets that don't give enough time. Some people are working long hours, and some of use are sticking to our 40 and done. The features are released as wished. The production defect count increases, and the production team grumbles. I assume we'll repeat this until the clients get sick of shoddy workmanship and outages.

user5994461 9y ago
Quick question, what does your contract say about work hours? There is usually a well defined limit and the unpaid overtime you do should be regarded as illegal. Don't put all the blames on management when developers do long hours. It's the developers who decide to stay late all the time when they should not.
- noxToken 9y ago
  A lot of us are contractors for the company with 40 hour work weeks. People at my company are salaried. I don't know about the other companies. I don't stray much from my 40 hours. If others want to put in that time, so be it. I always tell them to knock it off, but some people just can't be helped. I don't put it all on management. It's a little of column A and a little of column B. It's tough standing up to management when they control your well-being.
  - scaryclam 9y ago
    I wonder what would happen if a company had overtime pay for developers. I'd be willing to put money on working hours getting reduced to something sane and deadlines pushed back to accommodate it. Maybe one day I'll suggest a trial for it at my company ;)
    - nsxwolf 9y ago
      I worked for a company where we were all regular W2 exempt employees, but paid hourly. We got paid for every hour worked. Curiously, we all worked a lot, made a ton of money for years and years, and bled the company dry. They eventually brought in some accountants that told them they had to put the brakes on this, and we were converted to salary. The company still ended up shutting down a couple years later, but it was a wild and lucrative ride.
    - mlloyd 9y ago
      Just become a consultant. Much more lucrative and much more freedom.
Sevrene 9y ago
Working overtime without some sort of commiseration should be illegal, yet it is typically expected in a lot of salaried work. Even my local groceries makes their workers spend 10 minutes cleaning up before close, 'off the clock'. Game studios are notorious for the crunch at the end of a projects life cycle because of the random off the cuff date a publisher needs to fill up a void in their yearly lineup or quarter. The thing is they don't explicitly say 'work over time' they say 'this feature needs to be complete and working by Monday or else' What does management think the developer will do, pull it out of our behind? Reminds me of Steve Jobs, actually. I once had my boss explain to me if these features don't get completed before the end of the month, he will lose his house. I had already previously told him that it's impossible and had to explain we will need to compromise to reach that date. We released 1 month late but the software has a lot of issues and I'm now blamed for this as the lead developer of only two programmers. I worked 12 hour days 6 days a week for 1 month and he wanted me to work more. He still has his house. It's a zero sum game. Developers only have so much time in a week and the more you chip at sleep and rest/play time, the more it's going to cost the developer's health and the project's cost. It's frustrating because I'm just a developer (mostly contractor to boot) and yet I feel like I have valuable constructive criticism that would benefit management and the productivity of the project on the whole if they adapted it. You can rarely pull that off tastefully. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe these things exist for a good reason and I'm seeing this differently because I'm not in management so I have some confirmation bias. That's possible, but I've experienced the exact same scenario as you and it always seems harmful for the developer and harmful for the project.
- internetman55 9y ago
  I'm new in this industry, but based on my life, the experience of some close friends, and anecdotes like this, my impression is that you need enough career security and cash savings that you can just ignore stupid requests from your boss and not care about the fallout. Of course that is probably unsustainable outside of entry level jobs, so I am sort of convinced that I should have a 6-10 year plan to exit it
  - Sevrene 9y ago

user5994461 9y ago

Quick question, what does your contract say about work hours? There is usually a well defined limit and the unpaid overtime you do should be regarded as illegal. Don't put all the blames on management when developers do long hours. It's the developers who decide to stay late all the time when they should not.

noxToken 9y ago
A lot of us are contractors for the company with 40 hour work weeks. People at my company are salaried. I don't know about the other companies. I don't stray much from my 40 hours. If others want to put in that time, so be it. I always tell them to knock it off, but some people just can't be helped. I don't put it all on management. It's a little of column A and a little of column B. It's tough standing up to management when they control your well-being.
- scaryclam 9y ago
  I wonder what would happen if a company had overtime pay for developers. I'd be willing to put money on working hours getting reduced to something sane and deadlines pushed back to accommodate it. Maybe one day I'll suggest a trial for it at my company ;)
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    I worked for a company where we were all regular W2 exempt employees, but paid hourly. We got paid for every hour worked. Curiously, we all worked a lot, made a ton of money for years and years, and bled the company dry. They eventually brought in some accountants that told them they had to put the brakes on this, and we were converted to salary. The company still ended up shutting down a couple years later, but it was a wild and lucrative ride.
  - mlloyd 9y ago
    Just become a consultant. Much more lucrative and much more freedom.

Sevrene 9y ago

Working overtime without some sort of commiseration should be illegal, yet it is typically expected in a lot of salaried work. Even my local groceries makes their workers spend 10 minutes cleaning up before close, 'off the clock'. Game studios are notorious for the crunch at the end of a projects life cycle because of the random off the cuff date a publisher needs to fill up a void in their yearly lineup or quarter. The thing is they don't explicitly say 'work over time' they say 'this feature needs to be complete and working by Monday or else' What does management think the developer will do, pull it out of our behind? Reminds me of Steve Jobs, actually. I once had my boss explain to me if these features don't get completed before the end of the month, he will lose his house. I had already previously told him that it's impossible and had to explain we will need to compromise to reach that date. We released 1 month late but the software has a lot of issues and I'm now blamed for this as the lead developer of only two programmers. I worked 12 hour days 6 days a week for 1 month and he wanted me to work more. He still has his house. It's a zero sum game. Developers only have so much time in a week and the more you chip at sleep and rest/play time, the more it's going to cost the developer's health and the project's cost. It's frustrating because I'm just a developer (mostly contractor to boot) and yet I feel like I have valuable constructive criticism that would benefit management and the productivity of the project on the whole if they adapted it. You can rarely pull that off tastefully. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe these things exist for a good reason and I'm seeing this differently because I'm not in management so I have some confirmation bias. That's possible, but I've experienced the exact same scenario as you and it always seems harmful for the developer and harmful for the project.

internetman55 9y ago
I'm new in this industry, but based on my life, the experience of some close friends, and anecdotes like this, my impression is that you need enough career security and cash savings that you can just ignore stupid requests from your boss and not care about the fallout. Of course that is probably unsustainable outside of entry level jobs, so I am sort of convinced that I should have a 6-10 year plan to exit it
- Sevrene 9y ago