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Everyone should do the work all night at their office once in their career to realize how utterly pointless it is then never do it again. Bonus points if you d

Everyone should do the work all night at their office once in their career to realize how utterly pointless it is then never do it again. Bonus points if you do it for some tiger strike super important big project that gets cancelled three months later when the C-suite finds a new partner du jour.

marcus_holmes 7y ago
I did a 36-hour coding marathon to hit a deadline in my 20's. By 24 hours into it, I was writing garbage (actually by 12 hours into it I was writing garbage, but it didn't become painfully obvious until later). I kept going because I thought I could muscle through and get it done. My boss came in to find me asleep on the office sofa. At the end, it was "done" but so bugridden that we couldn't deploy. I had to go sleep for a whole day to get back to normal, and then it took me another two days to fix everything. It would have been so much better if I'd just worked about 10 hours, gone home to get some relaxation and sleep, and then come in and worked another 10 hours. By hour 12 I was damaging the code base, and by hour 30 I was just making more work for everyone. In subsequent roles managing devs, I learned from this and sent my devs home after they'd done 10 hours. And defended them against sales/senior managers who tried insisting that they stay and get it done. I learned that if you absolutely insist that crunch time can't happen, and the rest of the company knows it, then miraculously it stops being a thing. Deadlines become more realistic if everyone knows that pulling an all-nighter to get it done is not going to happen.
- pdimitar 7y ago
  I admire people like you who are able to dig their feet into the ground and defend the sensible position. We need more people like you in management: namely to be willing to take bullets but not budge when they know they would otherwise damage their staff. Please, never change.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

I did a 36-hour coding marathon to hit a deadline in my 20's. By 24 hours into it, I was writing garbage (actually by 12 hours into it I was writing garbage, but it didn't become painfully obvious until later). I kept going because I thought I could muscle through and get it done. My boss came in to find me asleep on the office sofa. At the end, it was "done" but so bugridden that we couldn't deploy. I had to go sleep for a whole day to get back to normal, and then it took me another two days to fix everything. It would have been so much better if I'd just worked about 10 hours, gone home to get some relaxation and sleep, and then come in and worked another 10 hours. By hour 12 I was damaging the code base, and by hour 30 I was just making more work for everyone. In subsequent roles managing devs, I learned from this and sent my devs home after they'd done 10 hours. And defended them against sales/senior managers who tried insisting that they stay and get it done. I learned that if you absolutely insist that crunch time can't happen, and the rest of the company knows it, then miraculously it stops being a thing. Deadlines become more realistic if everyone knows that pulling an all-nighter to get it done is not going to happen.

pdimitar 7y ago
I admire people like you who are able to dig their feet into the ground and defend the sensible position. We need more people like you in management: namely to be willing to take bullets but not budge when they know they would otherwise damage their staff. Please, never change.