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by Sean McCormack.
Original Post: Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work - lessons from EA Games
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Darrell
Norton has pointed to a
great article that discusses the recurring flaw of demanding overtime to meet
deadlines. Although I believe occasional crunches are feasible, it seems like
EVERYTHING in our industry ends up being critical...and the result is a constant high-stress,
high-output, high-workload environment.
During the dot-com boom, I worked for several start-ups. It was standard at
that time for companies to expect 80-100 hours a week. Several of the companies
that I worked at saw 60 hours as just barely pulling your weight. We even had
fold out couches for those overnighters, and 24-7 kitchens (not to mention the refrigerators
stocked with the Developer's Elixir of Life - Mt Dew and Dr Pepper ;-)).
I found that although all of us were putting in huge amounts of time, the net increase
in output really wasn't any different. That's because people still have lives
outside of work that they need to manage. So, instead of taking a half hour
lunch, they would take two hour lunches to run errands. The work day would be
interspersed with a lot more personal phone calls, dinner, play time, etc.
People would often take long breaks, pay bills at work, mindlessly surf the internet...they
just spread their personal needs and issues across a much longer work day.
The lesson learned is that the expectation that individuals can sustain large numbers
of hours on a continuous basis is completely impractical...especially in an industry
like ours that requires a lot of thinking. In order to perform effectively,
you have to have downtime to let your brain rest. Management that thinks it's
increasing output by demanding more hours is only paying more money for roughly the
same net amount of work.
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