Valve Handbook for New Employees

[Xanthippe]

I've never seen someone who constantly works weekends and/or 9-10 hour days be anything but a miserable cranky asshole.

Provided it doesn't last indefinitely, I have. My spouse worked 70ish hours a week for almost a year about the time I was pregnant with our son, and he loved it. Loved the team, loved the project, the company treated people very well. It was a really fun time for him.

I don't think that he would have continued to be happy had that been a normal work week, though. He loves what he does but not quite enough to do it 7 days a week for years.

[NiX]

Provided it doesn't last indefinitely, I have. My spouse worked 70ish hours a week for almost a year about the time I was pregnant with our son, and he loved it. Loved the team, loved the project, the company treated people very well. It was a really fun time for him.

I don't think that he would have continued to be happy had that been a normal work week, though. He loves what he does but not quite enough to do it 7 days a week for years.

Unfortunately a lot of us aren't doing something we love, just something we don't mind doing. The worst part is that I've had something like 10-12 jobs and I know it could be way worse in terms of work environment and stress.

[HaemishM]

96-hour work weeks? FUCK A BUNCH OF THAT. Miserable asshole? I'd be fucking murderous.

I worked at a newspaper getting their first web site launched back in 1998. From the time I started at the beginning of February to the beginning of May, I had to get the site up and it was a massive multi-site hydra that had nothing to do with news (the Gannett's shitbags wanted a real estate, classifieds and jobs site before news). For the last month before the launch, I worked from 8 am til 1:30/2 am the next morning, then came back and did it again, every single day of the week including the weekends. By the last Friday, I was fucking mush. That day I came in at 8 am, and wasn't allowed to leave until the next day at 12 noon. And the only reason I was allowed to leave was that I told them I couldn't do this shit anymore and I was going home to sleep. I was literally falling asleep with my hand on the mouse while FTPing files to the server.

I can guarantee you I wasn't in anyway remotely worth one gram of fuck from about 5 pm that Friday. And that was when I was 26 years old. Somehow I managed to sleep that whole Saturday and make it back for another 12-hour day on Sunday to get the goddamn site live. I didn't stay at the job one picosecond longer than I had to. Those fuckers are crazy.

Anybody that tells you overtime is productive is trying to steal from you, and not money but something more precious... time. That person is also a complete gibbering monkey's asshole and should be fired into the sun.

[Quinton]

Wow 96 is just completely insane, especially long haul.

8-10 hour productive days are totally possible, but beyond that it really gets into diminishing returns pretty rapidly.  In bursts, sure, I've had the occasional 15+ hour day where I was just cranking out the code, or a three day weekend bringing up a new platform where I camped out at the office, but sustaining over 50-60 hours a week for months or more and actually having that time be worthwhile... not something that happens in my experience.

I'm not familiar with the "more applicants than we know what to do with" situation, if you qualify it as "qualified applicants."  Finding good people has always been the hardest part.  Admittedly I tend to interview systems/OS engineers and that's a less common skillset, but even at Google (which definitely gets an absurd volume of resumes submitted) I've found it difficult to find really good people.

And yeah, I'll repeat: crazy hours poured into something that you love (and, ideally, you're getting good pay or other compensation for) is entirely different than mandatory insane overtime.

[Fabricated]

What the fuck is it with IT/Programming jobs and ridiculous work schedules that people just put up with? Is it just because you're not working with equipment that can actually kill people like factory jobs?

I know my business degree is useless and what I learned was pointless, but literally every book or class I had that discussed HR/compensation/etc basically said, "If you're giving overtime, you are a shitty manager."

[NiX]

What the fuck is it with IT/Programming jobs and ridiculous work schedules that people just put up with? Is it just because you're not working with equipment that can actually kill people like factory jobs?

I know my business degree is useless and what I learned was pointless, but literally every book or class I had that discussed HR/compensation/etc basically said, "If you're giving overtime, you are a shitty manager."

It's really a result of there still being a lot of archaic business practices in place because the people who coveted them haven't retired or died yet. The generation gap in the workplace right now is mostly problematic.

[Kageru]

What the fuck is it with IT/Programming jobs and ridiculous work schedules that people just put up with? Is it just because you're not working with equipment that can actually kill people like factory jobs?

No professional body. Lawyers and Accountants (and many other professions) have additional levels of certification that reduce the number of practitioners so you can't treat them quite as expendably. Plus it is a relatively young profession and for some reason all the old guys burn out / aren't as employable (probably because they push back when told to work stupid hours).

Working regular over-time is pretty much contributing to unemployment and fat corporate profits.. /cheer.

[Murgos]

To be fair, other professional bodies do make their (new) employees work retard hours as well.  Lawyers at private practice routinely work 80-90 hours until they make partner and Dr.s routinely work 2-day shifts when starting out.

No, I don't think either practice is justified.

[Kageru]

Yep, that's how they reduce the number of practitioners. It's a wonderful system if you are on the right side of the bar.

[Engels]

I used to work at Amazon in the late 90s, and I can tell you that yes, we had crazy overtime during certain periods, but nothing like Bhodi's old boss describes. However, I can imagine some Amazon departments still have that level of nuttyness. Its a hang over from the dot com years, where working at Amazon was basically your 'joy in life'. Amazon folks were your playmates as well as your workmates, and there was a sense that we were all 'making history', so the insane commitment felt more like a mutually shared adventure. Naturally, after the novelty of the internetz wore off, people started to burn out on the hours, and wanted to have a family, and kids, etc.

It was GREAT for 20 somethings making something of themselves. Bullshit for anyone already established in life.

[Xanthippe]

What the fuck is it with IT/Programming jobs and ridiculous work schedules that people just put up with? Is it just because you're not working with equipment that can actually kill people like factory jobs?

Plus it is a relatively young profession and for some reason all the old guys burn out / aren't as employable (probably because they push back when told to work stupid hours).

Old guys aren't willing to live at the office like young guys are. Which is why they aren't as employable as the hungry.

[Merusk]

Old guys look back at the ruin of their early lives, families and marriages and say "well that sure as fuck wasn't worth it" and stop working long hours.

Maybe that's just me.

[Ingmar]

Old guys aren't willing to live at the office like young guys are. Which is why they aren't as employableexploitable as the hungry.

[Murgos]

They [old guys] also have less easily replaced skill sets.  Which typically requires their employer to give them more lee-way or risk losing them.

[NiX]

They [old guys] also have less easily replaced skill sets.  Which typically requires their employer to give them more lee-way or risk losing them.

I can only hope to one day achieve this status. Tired of the expectation being that I should be paid for as little work as possible while I work ~45-50 hour weeks.

[jakonovski]

They [old guys] also have less easily replaced skill sets.  Which typically requires their employer to give them more lee-way or risk losing them.

I can only hope to one day achieve this status. Tired of the expectation being that I should be paid for as little work as possible while I work ~45-50 hour weeks.

The curious part is that the end result differs very little from Soviet work practices.