When I get home I find myself dying to do something menial. It takes me more effort to program for two hours than it does to, like, 12 hours of physical labor. It's not as physically exhausting, but it wrecks my brain.
What I've noticed is that stress/overworking comes when the team is pressured for time. As a mental, as opposed to physical laborer, sometimes less is more, and sometimes that means leaving an hour early just to figure out the solution to your problems on the drive home.
Managers who think "butts in seats, hands on keyboards" equals "more productivity" can't effectively manage programmers.
I work remotely, minimize distractions, have few meetings, and I’m generally working 10-14 hours a day - without making any time for growth, HN, etc. That is all focus time, and fast movement. EDIT: That’s the baseline... “Overtime” is that plus nights and weekends. These remarks are about USA-based companies, and salaried positions.
Have learned that at some of these smaller startups, the devs have different capacities, but the company just learns what each person can do and asks for (at least) 120%+ of that. And people play psychological tricks to keep people cranking it.
I have puzzled about who this arrangements benefits... As the turnover is more costly than the illusion of getting a bit more done today. FWIW, The best readings I’ve found about it are on DaedTech and Ribbonfarm.
Some larger Cos. do the same but sometimes they also have the budget that can support people coasting as others have mentioned in this thread. But many of those rely on “office traps” and expect a lot of performative presence (50+ hours a week or you’re negatively judged). And even if some people are coasting some of the time, they find ways to burn people out in bursts.
It burns people out and it seems to be a bad deal for everyone involved.
Currently figuring out how to get back to a healthy and sustainable balance, but without talking explicitly about it with people at work, as it is a taboo subject. This is my Nth job as a dev where I’ve been in this situation.
I’m only recently starting to accept there are not consistently available jobs/employers who allow transparency about work/life balance or burnout; at most they pretend to but it is translated to negative marks on you. Both in the interview process and on the job...
When I was working as a chef: out of a 12 hour shift, perhaps 9-10 hours were full on.
When I worked on the docks(forklift driver/unloading by hand), 7-8 hours full on out of a 10 hour shift.
As an eikawa teacher, a little better, 40% full on teaching, 20% prep and the last 40 bullshitting.(I hated that job).
My current job, 9 hour shift, 4-5 teaching, 2+ prep and creating future classes, rest meetings or bullshitting/lunch.
Today: 5 hours prep for current week/future courses, 3 hours classes, 4 hours meetings(random day today).
I was thinking tonight about how my workload had changed and it seemed much better, but damn.
I don't even know how to put this into words at this point, without sounding too conceited, but I cannot fathom a reason for anyone here to complain about overwork :-p