Death marches I have done: - Five months 80+ hours/week on my first video game - Nine months of similarly insane hours shipping a consumer PC platform - Well

Death marches I have done: - Five months 80+ hours/week on my first video game - Nine months of similarly insane hours shipping a consumer PC platform - Well over a year of crazy on the Apple Newton, including six back-to-back 100+ hour weeks - A couple more for Microsoft, on various things, including a few of those century weeks (my wife called me "broken" on the last one) In each case it took me 3+ months to recover, probably more. Last year, faced with the "opportunity" to do another one, I resigned. By all accounts I made the right choice. A death march is a sign that something is seriously no-kidding broken in planning and management. It may be necessary to actually do a DM to recover from the situation you've dug yourself into, but organizations should learn from this. But instead of learning, companies come to depend on them. The expectation develops that the technical staff can be leaned on to rescue bad decisions. One of my ex-cow-orkers likened it to an addiction. The price? Loss of good talent, bad morale that leads to mistrust, even poorer decisions, a sense of powerlessness at the worker-bee level, and lack of continuity in follow-on products because of turnover. I will say that I've made fast friends and learned a hell of a lot about people during DMs. But I'd much rather work in a place that does a DM, learns from it and adapts.