Web Coder Plus

Creating Passionate Users has a great article right now called When clients (and bosses) go bad….

It struck me that my current company (whom I have worked at for 5 years now) has gone through several phases. I don’t think I’m allowed to go into too much detail, but my (over)time here goes something like this:

In the beginning the company had already stopped being a small company and was well into it’s first growth spurt, despite this, most employees were young and untainted by other companies. Overtime was expected, but there was always a feeling of camaraderie. The bosses stayed late as well, they bought pizza and soft drinks, we had a pool table, an air hockey table, and an AV room with projector and surround sound. At 9pm, the building would still be half full, significant others could come and go, and despite the horrible deadlines software got release and it was good.

As we grew, more and more managers (and normal staff) were recruited from what I call “normal” companies. Apparently overtime was now something to be deplored. We were supposed to work our 8 hour day, and any overtime was now a bad thing. Yet the deadlines didn’t change, so overtime happened anyway. Except now we didn’t get food unless we ordered it ourselves, the pool table was covered in rubbish, the AV room was moved to a building across the road and the air hockey table was never plugged in. At one point I worked 18 hour days 7 days a week for 2 months, I got a stomach ulcer, and the projects slipped and slipped and when they finally got released they were of sub par quality.

These days things have improved a little. Projects are planned better and overtime almost never happens, and as a result our projects tend to be of much better quality (I’d say - this is a thumb suck - twice the complexity, in half the time, with half the bugs). But when the occasional project falls behind and overtime is required, the poor person involved still finds themselves all alone at work with no food, no company and as a result the software is not of a standard we can be proud of.

If only we could get to a nice mix of minimal overtime and when it’s needed: Hollywood overtime!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 at 10:02 am and is filed under General, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.