
How To Survive A Death March - thenomad
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/01/you-are-an-athlete-how-to-surv.html
======
kabdib
Death marches I have done:

\- Five months 80+ hours/week on my first video game

\- Nine months of similarly insane hours shipping a consumer PC platform

\- Well over a year of crazy on the Apple Newton, including six back-to-back
100+ hour weeks

\- A couple more for Microsoft, on various things, including a few of those
century weeks (my wife called me "broken" on the last one)

In each case it took me 3+ months to recover, probably more.

Last year, faced with the "opportunity" to do another one, I resigned. By all
accounts I made the right choice.

A death march is a sign that something is _seriously_ no-kidding broken in
planning and management. It may be necessary to actually do a DM to recover
from the situation you've dug yourself into, but organizations should learn
from this.

But instead of learning, companies come to depend on them. The expectation
develops that the technical staff can be leaned on to rescue bad decisions.
One of my ex-cow-orkers likened it to an addiction.

The price? Loss of good talent, bad morale that leads to mistrust, even poorer
decisions, a sense of powerlessness at the worker-bee level, and lack of
continuity in follow-on products because of turnover.

I will say that I've made fast friends and learned a hell of a lot about
people during DMs. But I'd much rather work in a place that does a DM, learns
from it and adapts.

~~~
banachtarski
I worked 100+ hours for 9 months straight on a game :(. The biggest part of
the burnout for me was that halfway through, I realized I didn't even believe
the product would do well (it didn't).

In retrospect many things could have gone differently. I know now that the
desire to do a death march from upper management was really a sign of
immaturity on their part.

------
justin_vanw
So, I think I can give some much shorter and better advice for how to survive
a death march, in the form of a flowchart:

    
    
      1. Do you excel at your job?
    
        - Yes: Ask around and get a job somewhere with management that isn't shit.
    
        - No: Change careers, goto 1.
    
    

Although I appreciate, and read with interest, articles such as "how to
survive in a POW camp" or "How to survive in prison", I don't really see why
you would need that advice if POW camps and prisons were voluntary and you
could freely leave.

(The reason I say change careers if you are not good at your job: Good
management will be able to tell you aren't good and they won't hire you, or if
you do get in the door it won't last. Being bad at something means your entire
experience of work is necessarily at the kind of place that hires bad people,
which is not how you want to spend your short experience of being alive)

~~~
thenomad
Death marches are sometimes necessary (or at least useful enough to be worth
the inconvenience) even in careers you love, though.

Two weeks before the launch of a book/film/whatever, for example, would be a
classic time when burning the midnight oil is actually a good idea - if you
know you can take it easy afterward...

(Edit: I'm strictly speaking about short-term "crunch" here. Crunching for max
a few weeks - sometimes useful. Crunching for months - no, that's a terrible
plan, and an indicator of terrible management.)

~~~
justin_vanw
What if I told you it's incredibly risky to rely on a miracle in the last 2
weeks, and it would be much better to properly manage the project and have it
completed in plenty of time, rather than being inefficient in the early part
of a project and making up for it when the pressure of a deadline forces you
to face reality?

~~~
WalterSear
This is fine and good, but not very useful advice to people who find
themselves of looking for a miracle in the last 2 weeks.

~~~
justin_vanw
There is no good advice for someone in that situation. The best advice for
someone in that situation is to not get into it next time, if there is a next
time, because you are totally fucked up and down and sideways right now.

Now, if you are obsessed with death marches to the point of replying to every
comment on this thread, like thenomad, my advice is stop spending all day
hitting reload and waiting for someone to post on hackernews so you can jump
in and defend death marches, and go read a book on project management or study
or work or do anything besides procrastinating, which is probably the root
cause of why you end up in that situation all the time. Learn to do work when
there isn't a gun to your head.

~~~
danielweber
Sometimes you are assigned to a death march by management. Not everyone lives
in a place where there are 10 employers waiting to immediately hire you if you
quit on the spot. You need to figure out how to live with the death march and
be supportive of your teammates while finding greener pastures.

~~~
greenyoda
Although if you only work 60 hours a week instead of 80, your boss is not
likely to fire you in the middle of a death march, since you'd still be more
productive than anyone he could replace you with. (There's no spare time to
bring new employees up to speed when you're doing a death march.)

Besides, working only 60 hours might make you more productive than all the
people who are working 80 hours (better focus, fewer mistakes).

------
tekacs
I'll vouch for everything in this article [1] and add: if doing this, sleep
_consistently_ every day.

If you're in the middle of something, just drop it and go to sleep. If you've
been working on something all week, you're not going to forget something or
lose your place or indeed, if done right [2], even lose your 'flow' by
sleeping.

Getting 80-100 _useful_ hours out of an 168 hour week can only come if you use
a good chunk of the other 68+ hours sleeping - but even moreso than getting
enough hours of sleep, getting them at roughly the same time every day can
make a big difference.

[1]: Having learnt most of this the hard way.

[2]: As inadvisable as it might sound, working immediately before bed is the
only way I've found that _ensures_ this.

~~~
gordaco
Absolutely agree. I'm in a kind of death march of my own, since my exams start
tomorrow and yet I haven't asked for days on my full time job (as a software
engineer, i.e., a completely brain-oriented job). For the last 15 days I've
done basically nothing but studying, working and satisfying vital needs like
eating... or sleeping. Not for a single moment have I thought of sleeping less
than 7-8 hours a day, since I know for past experiences that it would be the
stupidest thing to do. Anyone advising to undersleep, _especially when you
have to do a lot of work_ , is completely clueless (or worse, wants you to
fail). I'm so concerned with not undersleeping that I'm getting up extremely
early, so that if my body is asking for more than 8 hours, I still have plenty
of time to sleep before going to work.

(This break, that I'm using to write this message, will be the last one until
the end of the next three days, which include 4 exams)

~~~
tekacs
Good luck!

------
incision
I agree with and can vouch for every one of these points - particularly when
working is isolation.

Thing is, every death march I've been on has been a group effort where
appearing to suffer _for_ whichever executive dropped the ball at the onset is
at least as important as actually producing. In these situations, appearing
healthy much less taking breaks will be taken as a lack of effort.

The guide I could really use is one on how to manage "up" and limit the
effects of or outright avoid working for the panderers and incompetents who
create death marches in the first place.

~~~
thenomad
Ugh. I feel for anyone stuck in an environment where appearing ill is actually
considered a positive sign. Pretty much the definition of a toxic workplace?

~~~
incision
_" >Pretty much the definition of a toxic workplace?"_

Yes, definitely.

To try and start answering my own question above, I think there were two main
factors that created that situation.

* Lack of Accountability - Our deadline didn't _really_ matter, it wasn't tied to anything concrete and the project wasn't backed with a very strong case either. It was an arbitrary promise at the executive level, a resume builder. Failing to meet it would cost at most some amount of internal embarrassment at the CXO level.

* Loyalty as Currency - Like I said in the first post, we had to appear to suffer _for_ the executive. That's what the place was about, serving the person you work for. Not necessarily being faster, smarter or even genuinely working harder, just being a "team player" and "on board" with the vision from on high.

(Every time I hear someone talk about the importance "culture fit" in
reference to start-ups I'm reminded of this.)

~~~
anon4
Make-up. Buy make-up and give yourself bags under the eyes. Make sure to bathe
semi-regularly, and never wear new clothes. If you have weekends off, wear
your washed clothes on the weekend at the gym (or just do light exercise in
them at home), so they'll be pre-sweated when you come to work the next day.
Do your breaks in the restroom if you have to - since they're just 5 minutes
every half hour, people shouldn't really notice, unless you have a tracking
system.

Maybe putting on make-up isn't something you can pick up in a day (though
you're trying to make yourself look bad, not good), but the rest of it should
be fine. Basically - if you have to game the system to succeed, then think
like a lying asshole sociopath. If you don't have a healthy
management->employee relationship, I don't see any reason to try and maintain
a healthy employee->management one.

------
yummyfajitas
People repeatedly assert, without ever citing anything, that 40 hours/week is
some theoretical max on your productivity. Can anyone provide some actual
citations on this?

Robin Hanson did some investigation and found little empirical support, and
his data put 60 hours as the optimum (for construction, not knowledge work).

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/work-hour-
skepticism.h...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/work-hour-
skepticism.html)

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/construction-
peak-60hr...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/construction-
peak-60hrwk.html)

~~~
saalweachter
Uhhh, does that actually say what you want it to say?

The summary of the chart in the second link is roughly:

    
    
      hours   productivity   product
      40      100%           40.0
      50      90%            45.0
      60      83%            49.8
      70      69%            48.3
    

So productivity _per worker_ rises until around 60 hours per week, but
productivity _per worker hour_ is decreasing the entire way through.

What this means is that 60 hour weeks only make sense if your labor cost _per
worker_ is fixed, not your labor cost _per worker hour_. It doesn't make sense
even without overtime pay, but if you're paying someone time and a half to
work 60 hours a week, you're paying for 80 hours and getting 50 in return.
You'd be much better off paying two workers for 40 hours a week each and
actually getting 80 hours of work for those 80 hours you're paying for.

As an individual, working 60 hours per week regularly makes sense if you're a
self-employed author and can't hire someone else to get the extra 10 hours of
productivity, but if you're the average salaried slob working for the average
company, it's a terrible bargain. You make the same pay, and the company gets
10 hours of extra work while you lose 20 hours of extra time. Why the hell
would you agree to that?

~~~
gte910h
>The Business Roundtable study found that after just eight 60-hour weeks, the
fall-off in productivity is so marked that the average team would have
actually gotten just as much done and been better off if they’d just stuck to
a 40-hour week all along. And at 70- or 80-hour weeks, the fall-off happens
even faster: at 80 hours, the break-even point is reached in just three weeks.

[http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...](http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/)

~~~
yummyfajitas
I tried to follow the links in that article to primary sources and was not
able to find a single one (though the article links to some blogspam for the
Business Roundtable study).

A search for the title of the original study did turn up this meta-study:

[http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-
Resources/Ca...](http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-
Resources/Calculating_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-
_Nov_2001.pdf)

It has various narrow (i.e., really industry-specific) results that suggest
you can have 6 week sprints of 50 hour weeks and gain productivity. Nearly all
of it applies to construction.

Overall, I'm still not understanding why people are so confident that 40 hours
is the True Answer across all industries and all people, as is commonly
asserted.

~~~
gte910h
Here are some primary sources:
[http://micsymposium.org/mics_2011_proceedings/mics11_olson.p...](http://micsymposium.org/mics_2011_proceedings/mics11_olson.pdf)

[http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Munster/Industrial/chap17.htm](http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Munster/Industrial/chap17.htm)

[http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-
Resources/Ca...](http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-
Resources/Calculating_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-
_Nov_2001.pdf)

[https://www.construction-
institute.org/scriptcontent/more/sd...](https://www.construction-
institute.org/scriptcontent/more/sd43_more.cfm)

[http://classes.engineering.wustl.edu/2009/spring/jme4900/Art...](http://classes.engineering.wustl.edu/2009/spring/jme4900/Articles/COEModificationImpactEvaluationGuide.pdf)

[http://cmdept.unl.edu/drb/Reading/overtime2.htm](http://cmdept.unl.edu/drb/Reading/overtime2.htm)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Awesome I'll take a look.

------
Corrado
Rule 0: don't participate in death marches. Seriously. Death marches mean that
management has no idea what it's doing and you would be better off quitting
and getting another job. Then again, I am an old and bitter programmer. :/

~~~
thenomad
They're useful occasionally - at least, when working on one's own projects.
Certainly, as an indie filmmaker, there are times when temporarily doubling my
output is vital, usually in the run-up to a launch (like now).

If you're doing them over any great duration or with any frequency, though,
I'd agree that's a very bad sign indeed.

------
VLM
Today I completed a difficult five days and the blasted thing works and I hope
I never see this code again. Before you laugh because you've all pulled off 9
months without sleep or whatever manly chest beating, hear me out, because its
all fresh in my mind (obviously, with successful completion being today).

1) WRT athlete, your brain is overworked. The most important thing leading to
the quick(ish) resolution of the redesign was doing absolutely nothing on
Friday. If I hadn't done that, it would probably be another week... or two...
until I got this thing done. After the first ten hours on Wednesday and
Thursday I was making, in retrospect, provable negative progress at the rate
of about five hours of re-work required per hour of work.

2) Never deviate from procedure. When you're sleepy, cranky, panic, and tired,
skipping unit tests or a sort of individual code review is an excellent way to
make negative ten hours progress. If you know how to do it the right way, do
it that way even if its not immediately the fastest. I've never wasted so much
time as when I've tried to speed things up (this applies to general life, now
that I think about it).

3) Explain the whole thing as if to a noob or a coworker, over and over, until
you find the bug. So this case class inserts into that db table using ... uh..
that code that doesn't exist. Yeah. (Edited to emphasize "the whole thing"
means to find and fix major system design issues... the compiler will do a
fine job of finding missing semicolons, but entirely missing flowchart boxes
can only be found via systems analysis, and this is probably not the ideal
time for it)

I can mathematically prove that working 13+ hours a day results in about as
much net forward progress as working 4 hours per day. I would probably have
been done on Friday if I had just stopped early on Wednesday and Thursday, but
instead it took till Sunday afternoon. People who claim to work 90+ hours are
probably doing the mental equivalent of ditch digging or are only getting net
10+ hours per week forward progress.

Back to easy, much more productive, shorter hours next week...

------
bonemachine
_It 's not necessarily a very good idea (although death marches, used
judiciously, do work)_

No they don't.

Or that is: they _sometimes_ work for your boss (or your customer), in the
short run. But they don't work _for you_.

And when push comes to shove, that's who you need to look for, right?

There's _no_ reason, other than a feeling that you're expiclity under the
client (or employer's) thumb -- e.g. a short-term financial emergency; or
you're feeling very early in your career, and that you can live without a
shining reference from them, after you've made your way through the tunnel of
pain they've laid out for you; or you just didn't vet the other party
properly, and weren't aware of their manipulate (and perhaps sociopathic
tendencies) -- to put up with death marches, ever.

All you have to do (absent one of the above-mentioned emergencies) is say,
"I'm sorry about the external pressures you're facing, but asking me to put in
these hours this doesn't seem to be in line with the parameters we set up at
the outset for this project/job. It's also just not going to be good for your
working relationship, in the longer haul. So either you're going to need to
find additional resources to help you, or I'm going to have to pass."

It's not easy. But it's doable. And trust me, you'll respect yourself _a lot_
more in the morning.

For further guidance and inspiration on this topic, please see:

    
    
       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Ways_to_Leave_Your_Lover
    

"The answer is easy if you take it logical-ly..."

------
graeme
Good advice. I work with groups (LSAT and SAT students) who almost inevitably
end up in death marches in the weeks leading up to their exams. They need to
be told this.

I would add: delegate those things in your life that are work, but aren't
contributing to the objective of the death march. For instance, I work from
home, and certain administrative tasks are a thorn in my side. I now have
someone cleaning my place, and scanning documents, two of my least favourite
jobs.

This has increased the hours I can work in a week without feeling worn out.
This stuff can also be scaled up in a death march. I once spent a month
writing, and produced 50% more than my normal output.

But I felt more relaxed than normal. How? I was staying somewhere where the
hosts cooked, cleaned, and ran errands for me. I had zero responsibilties
apart from work. I think I worked 60 hours a week for a month, but I cut out
about 20 hours a week of tedious chores, and so I didn't notice the
difference.

~~~
thenomad
Yes, __definitely __agreed.

One of the most productive things I've done in the current crunch time has
been to spend a bit more money on buying pre-prepared vegetables and meat
during crunch. Extremely simple, but (given I cook all my and my gf's food
from scratch) a surprisingly substantial saving in time.

I wouldn't want to do this all the time - I like preparing food, and freshly
chopped onion tastes nicer - but in a crunch it's fantastic.

------
watwut
My advice would be: starting dead march anytime sooner then last week and half
is irrational. I do not believe authors estimate of three weeks 80 hours, that
is too long too much. It may feel good, but it is not a good idea. First, you
need to keep clean head and think eg.) * prioritize and cut everything non-
essential, * being organized is not waste of time, but do not overdo it, *
prioritize again and cut everything not super essential, * sleep enough hours,
* eat regularly and real food, * take short break after every longer subtask
(!short - measure it!), * be conscious: if you find yourself staring at the
screen or procrastinating, then it is good time for short break, * use the
above breaks for short but intensive physical activity, * socialize less then
usually, but find some time to socialize anyway.

Important: * have good testers and let them check for regressions as often as
possible. Really, they are more valuable then new programmers on team.

If you need to achieve something exceptional, you need to think clear above
all. The idea "wait we do not have to do it at all" saves more time then all
clever hacking in the world. And if you do not sleep and do not eat, you will
not be clever anyway.

As for last point, most people need to talk. If they do not get to talk out of
work, they tend to get more talkative in work. That means a lot of wasted
time. The last thing you want is to unconsciously use team meetings to satisfy
your communication needs and waste everybody's time.

It is ok to bundle things together eg. run to grocery store for food (3 in 1:
physical activity and break and food).

------
5teev
Pretty sensible advice for dealing with long hours over an extended period,
but I was confused by the use of the term "death march" which in terms of
software development is known as an anti-pattern:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_\(project_management\))

~~~
michaeldhopkins
I think the author of the article used it intentionally. The premise of the
article is that sometimes developers find themselves having to or choosing to
do a death march despite knowing it's unsustainable long-term, and there are
ways to make the death march more productive and mitigate the negative
effects.

------
greenyoda
" _But you can work 80 hours a week for the next three weeks and double what
you get done_ "

That seems rather optimistic, since your productivity and focus will probably
drop sharply after about 40-50 hours. So you're probably lucky if you're
getting 1.25 or 1.5 times more done by working twice as many hours, and
sometimes your total productivity will even decline.

For example, after 50 hours, a developer might be coding more bugs that
they'll have to spend time fixing the next day. If it takes longer to fix the
bug than it did to write that code, the productivity of the time spent writing
the code will have been negative - you would have been better off going home
and getting some sleep.

------
seivan
Currently doing a death march. Not sure how to deal with it once it's done.

~~~
dsr_
Assess carefully: does the company have a history of doing this? Are they
likely to do it again? Is it just your group, or is it the whole company?

Does it make the company profitable? Is the company only profitable because of
death marches?

Are they giving you a reward at the end sufficient to make it worthwhile for
you personally?

Don't go interviewing while you're on a death march with a known deadline. You
won't be able to think clearly or present yourself well.

~~~
seivan
Thanks for the kind words and advice. I'll keep these minds. The hardest part
is how tightly coupled this project is with myself. If it fails, it's me
failing, not the team or the project. Given the fact there were 4 UX people
and a project manager. I'm the one doing the death march at the end when all
their work was done.

I need advice on how to properly deal with that. It falls on me.

~~~
davidgerard
Do these two things in parallel:

1\. Demand help. "No, this is too large." Make it clear you seriously need
assistance here, or it's not going to be done by deadline.

2\. Prepare your resume in case 1. doesn't work.

~~~
VLM
Managers don't like hearing "no" but they love dollars and cents and being a
"decision maker". "I hear you'd like this done in a month... well its going to
take me two months if I work alone. The good news is I know two consultants
and the three of us can do it in a month for $abcxyz. Why will it take 50%
more labor hours to get it done quickly, well much like nine women can't pop
out a baby by cooperating in a month ... and BTW here is a nice book for you
called the mythical man month and it would be well worth your reading time. So
get back to me on that decision"

