It’s OK to love your job
Anyone who knows me personally or at work knows that I love to talk. It’s probably the only thing I can do very very well. Yet, it always bothered me that my personal blog (this one) has always been largely neglected and confined to short bursts of inspiration and content sharing. As usually happens, work and life took over. Not anymore.
This post comes courtesy of a link via Phil Sherry on twitter who shared a very interesting link from StackExchange titled “Should developers accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?“
This topic is very close to my heart since it is one of our fundamental tenets at hedgehog lab to treat developers as important assets. Given our entire company was built around the concept of getting together great developers and designers to produce simply brilliant work, I have always been against the imposed long hours and graft in agencies and a fair number of software companies. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I agree with a large part of the conversation in that post.
However, the top voted response on the discussion really annoyed me to the extent that I felt compelled to address and respond to it.
“Yes, developers think working long hours is a sign of machismo, it really is stupidity.”
I don’t think I have met a developer in all my years in the industry who thought long hours were somehow “the path to a thousand virgins”. This statement kicks off the very one-sided argument that long hours are essentially bad and everyone who works more than a 9 to 5 shift is basically doing it wrong.
There are tons of reasons why long hours are perfectly fine and working weekends is not a badge of shame.
Some of us LOVE what we do
Probably the most important reason developers work long hours is because they absolutely love what they do. They would rather miss out on a movie, a night out, or mundane television in order to learn that awesome new programming language or write something that they always wanted do.
One of the endearing memories I had from my younger days was the extremely late nights and long hours of programming. I was just introduced to the web and my fascination knew no bounds. As a self-taught programmer, I was obsessed about learning ever major programming language in those days. Staying up until 3am was small price to pay for pursuing something that you absolutely loved.
15 years later, I still love staying up late to read up on new technologies and tools. Admittedly, a majority of my time now is spent in sales and new business but it doesn’t stop me from sacrificing some down-time to catch up with the latest in technology. Not because I have been force to but because I WANT to.
Not every start-up is backed by tons of money in the bank
A lot of commentators in the above discussion had the opinion of “if your company is asking you to work longer, then they should really be hiring more people”. As someone who runs a boot-strapped company where money does not grow on trees, I can assure you that a lot of employers would love nothing more than to hire extra developers, give fair overtime and bonuses, and generally stick to fair working practices rather than tax existing staff.
However, the simple reality is that unless you are heavily funded start-up, the only way to deliver more work with limited resources is to encourage staff to put extra effort in.
I do take the point that you should not FORCE your developers to put in additional work outside their contracted hours but there are always exceptions that should apply.
Competition is a dangerous task master
The big problem in the tech industry and especially digital agencies is that long hours are the norm. For an agency to not enforce long hours is almost a competitive disadvantage in many circumstances.
As someone who runs an agency, I manage an average of 5 to 7 hours of sleep depending on times of the year and days. Yet, it is not unusual for some of my peers to work 18 to 20 hour days with less than 4 hours of sleep. The problem becomes worse as your seniority in the company increases.
The simple issue here is that your competitors are willing to put longer hours in to deliver work faster and cheaper than you. How do you respond to that? True that there are lot of other competitive advantages you can gain around skills, service, and strategy but in an industry that bills by the hour, more work equals more money.
None of this makes it right
Having argued for valid cases of longer hours, I have to agree ultimately with the broad points raised by people in the discussion. As I mature as a developer and as an entrepreneur, it is becoming increasingly evident to me that overworked developers are less productive developers. Sometimes, taking time off work actually helps developers broaden their horizons and increase output.
Employers in the tech industry should treat their staff as important assets and not as disposable “resources”.
I do not claim to know all the answers to some of the underlying issues behind the case for long hours but I know a good developer when I see one, and he definitely isn’t over-worked.
