McConnel makes a pretty convincing case in "Rapid Development" that long hours by programmers, are counter-productive. After a quite short span of overtime (a

McConnel makes a pretty convincing case in "Rapid Development" that long hours by programmers, are counter-productive. After a quite short span of overtime (a week or two), where development speed is increased by a relatively short amount, productivity drops to around 10 or 20% as far as I recall. The conclusion is that even if the developers worked 24 hours a day, they would still not be as productive as a well-rested and motivated team running standard 8 hours a day.