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How do people do that? I'm fairly new in the game, but right after Christmas I had to work 3 weeks, about 70 hours each in a row. I was _exhausted_ after that.

by javier2 11y ago

How do people do that? I'm fairly new in the game, but right after Christmas I had to work 3 weeks, about 70 hours each in a row. I was _exhausted_ after that. By the end of the third week, my head was just spinning and I went on a low morale and creative drought for 3 months... I could barely code deserialisation functions without losing focus.. So basically, how do you do it and keep sane?!

TylerE 11y ago
You don't, it's just that cuz EVERYONE is doing no one sees the insanity.
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jsjohnst 11y ago
When I worked for a former employer we had mega pushes leading up to CES. There's one month, we called it Red October, where most of my team was doing 100+hr weeks for the full month. How did we do it? Combination of lots of Red Bull (as in buying it by the pallet), free meals, onsite shower, and an amazing QA team who would consistently find all the stupid bugs coded bleary eyed at 3:30am.
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  I'm confused, because it sounds like you're proud of that work.
vidarh 11y ago
You don't. You put in the hours, but realistically beyond the first week at that kind of schedule, most people are so unproductive that they're just fooling themselves if they think it's helping. I've worked with many devs who think they can work those kind of schedules and be productive the whole time, but I've yet to work with one that actually was. On the other hand, I've had to send people working for me home after getting pressured into having people work long hours to finish a project and having people snap or become so unproductive that it was a net drain on the team. Mostly when people do crazy schedules and think it works they have lots of downtime they simply aren't paying attention to, e.g. drawn out morning rituals before they do any actual work; lots of breaks. And they'll simply just slow down and make more mistakes. It looks like it "works" because people seem busy the entire time, and seem exhausted at the end of it, but being busy and feeling exhausted is not an indicator of being productive.
ianamartin 11y ago
I did 110 hour weeks at a market research startup in Chicago. Every week for about 8 months. I'm not convinced that I wasn't insane there for a while. I am pretty sure that I've never drunk that much in my life. On the bright side, the 45 hours a week I do now seems like a damn vacation. Perspective is important.

by javier2 11y ago

TylerE 11y ago

You don't, it's just that cuz EVERYONE is doing no one sees the insanity.

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jsjohnst 11y ago

When I worked for a former employer we had mega pushes leading up to CES. There's one month, we called it Red October, where most of my team was doing 100+hr weeks for the full month. How did we do it? Combination of lots of Red Bull (as in buying it by the pallet), free meals, onsite shower, and an amazing QA team who would consistently find all the stupid bugs coded bleary eyed at 3:30am.

jsmthrowaway 11y ago
I'm confused, because it sounds like you're proud of that work.

vidarh 11y ago

You don't. You put in the hours, but realistically beyond the first week at that kind of schedule, most people are so unproductive that they're just fooling themselves if they think it's helping. I've worked with many devs who think they can work those kind of schedules and be productive the whole time, but I've yet to work with one that actually was. On the other hand, I've had to send people working for me home after getting pressured into having people work long hours to finish a project and having people snap or become so unproductive that it was a net drain on the team. Mostly when people do crazy schedules and think it works they have lots of downtime they simply aren't paying attention to, e.g. drawn out morning rituals before they do any actual work; lots of breaks. And they'll simply just slow down and make more mistakes. It looks like it "works" because people seem busy the entire time, and seem exhausted at the end of it, but being busy and feeling exhausted is not an indicator of being productive.

ianamartin 11y ago

I did 110 hour weeks at a market research startup in Chicago. Every week for about 8 months. I'm not convinced that I wasn't insane there for a while. I am pretty sure that I've never drunk that much in my life. On the bright side, the 45 hours a week I do now seems like a damn vacation. Perspective is important.