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Comment by zeroonetwothree

2 years ago

The flip side is if it’s “crunch time” it’s not the manager that needs to work 12 hours or weekends to get something shipped.

Maybe it’s just that I’m no longer in my 20s (or that I have only worked for european companies) but I do not work extra hours. If the project is going to “fail” because we are not willing to do crunch time (spoiler: the project is not going to fail because of that) then let it be. Mismanagement of time is on managers not on engineers. I can help sure in a punctual situation, but I’ve never done it so far.

That should never happen at any 'good' company imo, and I haven't personally experienced it.

  • If it is a project I strongly believe in and mostly said we should do, and it is more fun than frustrating, I will get into big focus and work or think about it continually until it is finished, then I slump and relax for a while, going around and bragging to my friends and writing docs and maybe tech talks.

    But if it a project without intrinsic motivation or large and clearly present business value (like fixing an incident or saving a $10M client contract but not some hopeful!thing that might pay off in two years), then I keep my weekends to maintain myself as a human being (which ironically also happens to benefit the company on that two year time scale).