Long hours, working weekends, staying on call, impossible deadlines, complex and ever-shifting technologies, and high-stress deployments. Maybe I'm just lucky,

Long hours, working weekends, staying on call, impossible deadlines, complex and ever-shifting technologies, and high-stress deployments. Maybe I'm just lucky, but that hasn't been my experience at 3 companies over 15 years. Occasional crunch time yes, but overall I've averaged less than 45 hours a week. I like the model I've seen of moving great programmers into lead roles (with PM-type duties) and then "uber lead" roles, which also include some program-management duties. What's worked for me is putting a great PM on the team, where she (they've invariably been women) gets whatever information she needs from me, and then goes off and does the scheduling and meetings and internal negotiations that would drive me crazy if I had to.