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So, I think I can give some much shorter and better advice for how to survive a death march, in the form of a flowchart: 1. Do you excel at your job? -

So, I think I can give some much shorter and better advice for how to survive a death march, in the form of a flowchart: 1. Do you excel at your job? - Yes: Ask around and get a job somewhere with management that isn't shit. - No: Change careers, goto 1. Although I appreciate, and read with interest, articles such as "how to survive in a POW camp" or "How to survive in prison", I don't really see why you would need that advice if POW camps and prisons were voluntary and you could freely leave. (The reason I say change careers if you are not good at your job: Good management will be able to tell you aren't good and they won't hire you, or if you do get in the door it won't last. Being bad at something means your entire experience of work is necessarily at the kind of place that hires bad people, which is not how you want to spend your short experience of being alive)

thenomad 13y ago
Death marches are sometimes necessary (or at least useful enough to be worth the inconvenience) even in careers you love, though. Two weeks before the launch of a book/film/whatever, for example, would be a classic time when burning the midnight oil is actually a good idea - if you know you can take it easy afterward... (Edit: I'm strictly speaking about short-term "crunch" here. Crunching for max a few weeks - sometimes useful. Crunching for months - no, that's a terrible plan, and an indicator of terrible management.)
- justin_vanw 13y ago
  What if I told you it's incredibly risky to rely on a miracle in the last 2 weeks, and it would be much better to properly manage the project and have it completed in plenty of time, rather than being inefficient in the early part of a project and making up for it when the pressure of a deadline forces you to face reality?
  - WalterSear 13y ago
    This is fine and good, but not very useful advice to people who find themselves of looking for a miracle in the last 2 weeks.
    - justin_vanw 13y ago
      There is no good advice for someone in that situation. The best advice for someone in that situation is to not get into it next time, if there is a next time, because you are totally fucked up and down and sideways right now. Now, if you are obsessed with death marches to the point of replying to every comment on this thread, like thenomad, my advice is stop spending all day hitting reload and waiting for someone to post on hackernews so you can jump in and defend death marches, and go read a book on project management or study or work or do anything besides procrastinating, which is probably the root cause of why you end up in that situation all the time. Learn to do work when there isn't a gun to your head.
      - thenomad 13y ago
        Not sure there's really any need for the ad-hominem, is there? I'm replying to comments on this thread because I'm the author of the original post, and it's polite to respond to people commenting on your work :) I suspect that we largely agree on the subject of death marches and their advisability, actually. Certainly, I'd say that as soon as you're doing death march hours for longer than about 3 weeks, or more frequently than about once a year, that's a Very Bad Idea.
      - danielweber 13y ago
        Sometimes you are assigned to a death march by management. Not everyone lives in a place where there are 10 employers waiting to immediately hire you if you quit on the spot. You need to figure out how to live with the death march and be supportive of your teammates while finding greener pastures.
        greenyoda 13y ago
        Although if you only work 60 hours a week instead of 80, your boss is not likely to fire you in the middle of a death march, since you'd still be more productive than anyone he could replace you with. (There's no spare time to bring new employees up to speed when you're doing a death march.) Besides, working only 60 hours might make you more productive than all the people who are working 80 hours (better focus, fewer mistakes).
  - thenomad 13y ago
    I'm not sure how "work harder than usual in the run-up to a launch" == "rely on a miracle". I suspect we may be used to sufficiently different industries that we're speaking at cross purposes, though.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    The world is more complex than that. Sometimes there is a hard deadline (those do exist for a large number of completely legitimate reasons) and even though the "must have"s are done and dusted, you know you won't have the opportunity to launch/go to print/present again for a good while, so you cram to really, really make the product shine and impress (any mildly intelligent and creative person who enjoys what they're doing will never run out of ideas for improvements, big and small, no matter how well a project is managed). Sometimes an opportunity comes out of left field - "prestigious conference X just had a cancellation, so we got a slot to demo not-quite-there-yet feature Y. Do we cram to build it, or do we pass on the slot?". Of course, as mentioned, you can't have this becoming the norm, and it might not be for all temperaments to work in a company where it might happen - but it's not in an of itself a bad thing.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  That's not a death march insofar as I understand it. Crunch time happens, emergencies happen. Death marches are where overtime becomes normal time, where crunch mode becomes normal mode. Going full-speed on the home stretch for a few days isn't necessarily bad, but a death march is when that turns into weeks, or months. That's your cue to GTFO.
  - thenomad 13y ago
    Ah, right, yes. I agree. Crunch time happens. (I'd argue that in rare cases, it can last up to a few weeks - like, say, if you're launching a film you've spent years on.) Months of crunch time, though, is just a Bad Idea. I actually cover this in the article - it's a bad idea because, apart from anything else, it's actually less productive than working sane hours. And yes, if you're stuck doing that regularly, I'd recommend some serious consideration of alternative employment options...
badman_ting 13y ago
I agree, 100%. However, it's good to be able to recognize one coming on, so you can get the hell out of there. And if you haven't been through that before you need someone to tell you what it looks like. At least once I've looked at the work slated and the time allotted, and said "hell no" because I recognized the signs.
- justin_vanw 13y ago
  I agree with you as well, but I wonder if you can see it coming and know to get out if you haven't been through it at least a little.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Once the boss said "do I need start leaving the building open around the clock so things get done?" If every one were not already running for the exits, that single question would have guaranteed it.
rfnslyr 13y ago
Exactly what I'm doing right now. I work a 9-5 but there is so much pressure and everyone usually ends up staying longer. Read my previous comments on conditions at my workplace. On any off time that I have I research current job postings of lucrative startups and compiled a list of all the shit I have to learn and excel that. I have 3 months left until the end of my contract in which I'm coding the most I possibly can. In the past 3 days I've coded two side projects in mongo/angular/express/node and a bunch of other tech.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  Huh, you're a contractor who's working extra hours for free that wants to jack that in and go to a mythical startup that's using javascript? Something is very odd about this comment, it makes no sense on so many levels.
  - DavidWoof 13y ago
    I think those extra hours for free are his offtime. In other words, he's a contractor in a bad position. In his offtime, he's learning new skills and building an online presence in order to get a better position next time. Nothing odd at all.
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      Yeah basically, I'm incoherent when I don't edit, heh.

thenomad 13y ago

Death marches are sometimes necessary (or at least useful enough to be worth the inconvenience) even in careers you love, though. Two weeks before the launch of a book/film/whatever, for example, would be a classic time when burning the midnight oil is actually a good idea - if you know you can take it easy afterward... (Edit: I'm strictly speaking about short-term "crunch" here. Crunching for max a few weeks - sometimes useful. Crunching for months - no, that's a terrible plan, and an indicator of terrible management.)

justin_vanw 13y ago
What if I told you it's incredibly risky to rely on a miracle in the last 2 weeks, and it would be much better to properly manage the project and have it completed in plenty of time, rather than being inefficient in the early part of a project and making up for it when the pressure of a deadline forces you to face reality?
- WalterSear 13y ago
  This is fine and good, but not very useful advice to people who find themselves of looking for a miracle in the last 2 weeks.
  - justin_vanw 13y ago
    There is no good advice for someone in that situation. The best advice for someone in that situation is to not get into it next time, if there is a next time, because you are totally fucked up and down and sideways right now. Now, if you are obsessed with death marches to the point of replying to every comment on this thread, like thenomad, my advice is stop spending all day hitting reload and waiting for someone to post on hackernews so you can jump in and defend death marches, and go read a book on project management or study or work or do anything besides procrastinating, which is probably the root cause of why you end up in that situation all the time. Learn to do work when there isn't a gun to your head.
    - thenomad 13y ago
      Not sure there's really any need for the ad-hominem, is there? I'm replying to comments on this thread because I'm the author of the original post, and it's polite to respond to people commenting on your work :) I suspect that we largely agree on the subject of death marches and their advisability, actually. Certainly, I'd say that as soon as you're doing death march hours for longer than about 3 weeks, or more frequently than about once a year, that's a Very Bad Idea.
    - danielweber 13y ago
      Sometimes you are assigned to a death march by management. Not everyone lives in a place where there are 10 employers waiting to immediately hire you if you quit on the spot. You need to figure out how to live with the death march and be supportive of your teammates while finding greener pastures.
      - greenyoda 13y ago
        Although if you only work 60 hours a week instead of 80, your boss is not likely to fire you in the middle of a death march, since you'd still be more productive than anyone he could replace you with. (There's no spare time to bring new employees up to speed when you're doing a death march.) Besides, working only 60 hours might make you more productive than all the people who are working 80 hours (better focus, fewer mistakes).
- thenomad 13y ago
  I'm not sure how "work harder than usual in the run-up to a launch" == "rely on a miracle". I suspect we may be used to sufficiently different industries that we're speaking at cross purposes, though.
- mseebach 13y ago
  The world is more complex than that. Sometimes there is a hard deadline (those do exist for a large number of completely legitimate reasons) and even though the "must have"s are done and dusted, you know you won't have the opportunity to launch/go to print/present again for a good while, so you cram to really, really make the product shine and impress (any mildly intelligent and creative person who enjoys what they're doing will never run out of ideas for improvements, big and small, no matter how well a project is managed). Sometimes an opportunity comes out of left field - "prestigious conference X just had a cancellation, so we got a slot to demo not-quite-there-yet feature Y. Do we cram to build it, or do we pass on the slot?". Of course, as mentioned, you can't have this becoming the norm, and it might not be for all temperaments to work in a company where it might happen - but it's not in an of itself a bad thing.
potatolicious 13y ago
That's not a death march insofar as I understand it. Crunch time happens, emergencies happen. Death marches are where overtime becomes normal time, where crunch mode becomes normal mode. Going full-speed on the home stretch for a few days isn't necessarily bad, but a death march is when that turns into weeks, or months. That's your cue to GTFO.
- thenomad 13y ago
  Ah, right, yes. I agree. Crunch time happens. (I'd argue that in rare cases, it can last up to a few weeks - like, say, if you're launching a film you've spent years on.) Months of crunch time, though, is just a Bad Idea. I actually cover this in the article - it's a bad idea because, apart from anything else, it's actually less productive than working sane hours. And yes, if you're stuck doing that regularly, I'd recommend some serious consideration of alternative employment options...

badman_ting 13y ago

I agree, 100%. However, it's good to be able to recognize one coming on, so you can get the hell out of there. And if you haven't been through that before you need someone to tell you what it looks like. At least once I've looked at the work slated and the time allotted, and said "hell no" because I recognized the signs.

justin_vanw 13y ago
I agree with you as well, but I wonder if you can see it coming and know to get out if you haven't been through it at least a little.
danielweber 13y ago
Once the boss said "do I need start leaving the building open around the clock so things get done?" If every one were not already running for the exits, that single question would have guaranteed it.

rfnslyr 13y ago

Exactly what I'm doing right now. I work a 9-5 but there is so much pressure and everyone usually ends up staying longer. Read my previous comments on conditions at my workplace. On any off time that I have I research current job postings of lucrative startups and compiled a list of all the shit I have to learn and excel that. I have 3 months left until the end of my contract in which I'm coding the most I possibly can. In the past 3 days I've coded two side projects in mongo/angular/express/node and a bunch of other tech.

mattmanser 13y ago
Huh, you're a contractor who's working extra hours for free that wants to jack that in and go to a mythical startup that's using javascript? Something is very odd about this comment, it makes no sense on so many levels.
- DavidWoof 13y ago
  I think those extra hours for free are his offtime. In other words, he's a contractor in a bad position. In his offtime, he's learning new skills and building an online presence in order to get a better position next time. Nothing odd at all.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    Yeah basically, I'm incoherent when I don't edit, heh.