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How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

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Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#11

Post by drblast »

I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my door closed most of the time.

I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out new things.

And yeah, 25-30 hours is probably a maximum, and it needs to be done in three-hour chunks at a minimum. As a manager you can easily destroy that by allowing an environment where a solid three-hour block of time never happens for a dev.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#12

Post by houst0n_ »

balls187 wrote: post #6
houst0n_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running teams of contractors for years, I disagree it's uncommon. I let my guys do whatever they want as long as the work is being delivered. Sometimes I have to have a standoff with some salaried dragonwoman or other who takes offence but that's on me and doesn't run downstream -- as long as everything is being done why should this be a problem? Productivity drops when you force people to work outside their peak sch…

> Running teams of contractors for years, I disagree it's uncommon. I let my guys do whatever they want as long as the work is being delivered. I agree with this statement. I would amend it to say "As long as the work they signed up for is being delivered."

Who is 'they' in that case? They for me is whoever is paying us to help them with their business.

If it's the contractors/team members then no. Ive unfortunately had several highly paid (4 figures uk/day) contractors who think themselves above certain tasks, or who refuse to do anything they didn't agree with who seem surprised when they get told to fuck off.

You're an overpaid contract dev and you're refusing to implement your points because you disagree with the architecture even after it was discussed fully, while on a k a day? Fuck those ballerinas. They won't be getting more work with us then.

We are there to help a business achieve a goal, nothing more.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#13

Post by tudorconstantin »

codr4life wrote: post #9
xyzzy4 wrote: post #7

To answer the actual question: 1. Pay your programmers per hour, and pay them very well. For example many people who are paid $200/hour would work 80 hours per week. 2. Provide free taxis or have easy public transportation to their homes. 3. Offer to pay for their children's daycare if they work extra hours. 4. Provide free food delivery from nearby restaurants.

Why would you work 80 hours per week when a couple of hours a day is enough to get by? Or even encourage that? There's plenty more important things in life than work and funny money, and plenty more important things in work than number of hours spent behind the keyboard.

Because you know that you go full throttle for 3-5 years and then you have the possibility to retire.

I would sacrifice 5 years of my life in order to get financial freedom for the rest of it.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#14

Post by a3n »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #7

To answer the actual question: 1. Pay your programmers per hour, and pay them very well. For example many people who are paid $200/hour would work 80 hours per week. 2. Provide free taxis or have easy public transportation to their homes. 3. Offer to pay for their children's daycare if they work extra hours. 4. Provide free food delivery from nearby restaurants.

Alternative answer: Ensure that the implication that "The IPO" and every individual's "exit" depends on those 80 hours is widely heard and vaguely understood. Hire people who believe that.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#15

Post by jrs235 »

codr4life wrote: post #9
xyzzy4 wrote: post #7

To answer the actual question: 1. Pay your programmers per hour, and pay them very well. For example many people who are paid $200/hour would work 80 hours per week. 2. Provide free taxis or have easy public transportation to their homes. 3. Offer to pay for their children's daycare if they work extra hours. 4. Provide free food delivery from nearby restaurants.

Why would you work 80 hours per week when a couple of hours a day is enough to get by? Or even encourage that? There's plenty more important things in life than work and funny money, and plenty more important things in work than number of hours spent behind the keyboard.

They might do it for short stints to "get ahead" if their scheduling allows it. If I know I'm going to get that extra time off in the future or I'm getting paid for it (garaunteeing I was compensated for it) I might do it for a week or two to save up for a nice vacation or time off to do my own thing. As a manager or business owner... I'd never encourage it and possibly not allow it. The hours worked beyond 40 in a week often have drastic diminishing returns and increases in mistakes or poor thinking.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#16

Post by memracom »

When I really like the work that I am doing and there are some real challenges, I can get up to 6 hours of work done before I have to take a break for a few hours. Not every day, but 2-3 days out of 5. It means that there is no point in making an appearance before 10 am or working past 4 pm. But when I am really smoking I can put in another 2-4 productive hours in the evening after 7 pm or so.

Of course, few employers understand this kind of work pattern, and most of them prefer having a developer spend more time in the office, even though it results in less productive work getting done. This is often enforced by people who are unable to correctly assess technical skills or the outcomes of technical work. Since they have no clue who is competent and whether any of the work output is usable, they compensate by forcing people to spend more time doing useless activities that they can assess. Like sitting at a desk, having meetings, raising an issue and setting up a meeting of stakeholders to discuss how to solve that issue. Many of us have to work in environments where these enforcers create a lot of churn to make it seem like the enforcer is a valuable member of the team.

I suspect that there are more such useless people in the workforce nowadays because companies no longer try to hire good competent people who will work for one company their entire career. As a result, there is nobody in the company long enough to identify and get rid of incompetents while at the same time, the truly skilled people give up and find a new opportunity every 2 to 3 years.

By the way, the incompetents that I talk about are not skilled developers who make a mistake or two, or who get stuck in ratholes solving the wrong problem. I am referring to the people that are weeded out with fizzbuzz. Unfortunately there is no fizzbuzz for project managers, business analysts and a whole range of other support roles, including managers.

So my take on how to get developers to work at a high level of productivity is to make the environment excellent. Get rid of the people who waste other people's time. Cut way back on meetings and replace them with a good ticket system and some people who make sure that tickets are properly sized with clear requirements including context and acceptance criteria. This pretty much means a mature Agile shop. Focus on all the stuff around the developers and make sure that the retrospectives are as brutally honest as possible, and follow through on fixing problems that are brought up in the retrospectives.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#18

Post by travisl12 »

drblast wrote: post #11

I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my door closed most of the time. I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out new…

That is so awesome... you have a door?!?

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#19

Post by codr4life »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #13
codr4life wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you work 80 hours per week when a couple of hours a day is enough to get by? Or even encourage that? There's plenty more important things in life than work and funny money, and plenty more important things in work than number of hours spent behind the keyboard.

Because you know that you go full throttle for 3-5 years and then you have the possibility to retire. I would sacrifice 5 years of my life in order to get financial freedom for the rest of it.

And then you get run over by a bus.
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