

The Unsustainability of Never-ending Workplace Marathons - vital101
http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/01/sprinting-marathons/

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jroseattle
Development death marches are direct reflection of a company's product
management. Show me a company that's constantly fighting to reach a
development deadline, and I'll show you a company with a product plan that's
short-term, often dysfunctional and out-of-control.

I've been there, both on the implementation side and on the management side. I
was both a victim and an antagonist. Having seen both sides, it's much more
difficult to grasp what's going on from the management side than from the team
implementation side.

The latest offense I'm seeing are those who follow iterative development
cycles, using SCRUM or some other approach with 2-week sprints, with
management assuming that means the laundry list of requests gets completed
faster in the short-term.

Anyone who asks me to join their dev organization (which happened a lot in
2011) now gets a standard question from me: what's your product management
plan look like?

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moocow01
Death marches in my experience are always reflective of companies that take on
excessive 'debt' in the more general sense. This may take the form of
accepting too much money from investors or making big future promises to
customers or shareholders. When this debt is too extreme it manifests itself
into a death march which is just a frantic move to satisfy the debt that was
probably unrealistic in the first place. Its similar to somebody who buys a
house outside of their means and then has to work 2 jobs to afford it.

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floppydisk
I think it ultimately boils down to management and how they view employees. If
management views employees as another cog in the wheel, easily replaced as
needed, then the "death marches" don't look so bad from their perspective.
Work people as hard as possible for as long as possible--if they quit or
leave, replace 'em. Conversely, if management views employees as long term
stakeholders in the company and desire to keep talent around for a while, they
build a corporate culture that pushes a good balance between work/life.

At first glance, in this case, you see a stark contrast between how two
organizations view developers. Zynga --> cog, meet wheel. Atomic Object -->
person, valued contributor.

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lucisferre
With all of the evidence to the contrary it still surprises me how many
companies still choose to adopt "crunch time" or "death march" mentalities to
motivate product development pace. I mean half the time these teams are not
even taking the time to know if they are building the right features and
designs, to say nothing of quality issues.

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munin
isn't zynga hugely profitable? doesn't amazon have a reputation for treating
their people like garbage?

business doesn't need to be sustainable. it just needs to be a short sprint to
your cash exit.

if you find yourself sitting at your desk wondering "why is my boss doing
this? it doesn't seem sustainable. maybe he just doesn't understand", stop and
remember: your boss probably isn't stupid. he probably knows whatever he's
doing isn't "sustainable", and he doesn't care.

~~~
moocow01
Good point but they are profitable as long as we let them be meaning that if
people would stop putting up with mistreatment employers would be forced to
change to turn a profit. (Note: my optimism about this occurring is pretty
low)

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lkrubner
Death march conditions make the most rational sense for exactly the conditions
that Paul Graham described:

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole
working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty
years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially
well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

Death march conditions are not sustainable forever, but I think most of us
have had a year or two when we were insanely excited about some project and
enjoyed working 60 hour weeks to get it done.

Paul Graham's words suggest the rational case for extremely long hours is when
you think you might be able to relax afterwards, perhaps retire early due to
the success that you are reaching for.

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kenjackson
The problem is when it doesn't pay off. I'm sure the guys at Heroku think it
was a great idea. But look at the 100 other companies that didn't make it.

After your failure, you may be financially behind your peers who did 9 to 6
jobs at traditional tech companies. So you do another and another startup.
What was two years of sprinting is now 8 years of it, and at the end the only
thing you'll likely have to show is cynicism.

A friend of mine did the expected value math for working at Google vs a
startup at typical salaries and bonuses for the two. And for NON-founders you
would need to see something like a 75% chance of your employer being acquired
or going public in 5 years (there's more to the math, but that was a high
level general takeaway).

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aaronbrethorst
Being compensated below market rate for sub-founder-level equity is a sucker's
game. If you like working at startups (I do), either find one that can pay
market rates, or start your own.

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kenjackson
I completely agree, but it's also extremely common. A lot of people get lured
in by the equity.

But do the math -- 1% equity on a $10M acquisition is $100k. Even 5% on a $20M
acquisition is just $1M.

Does anyone have data on how many people made more than $1M on a web start up
acquisition or IPO in the past five years?

You need to get market rate, or darn close, or founder-level equity.

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aaronbrethorst
_You need to get market rate, or darn close, or founder-level equity._

I have done the math, and I agree 100% :)

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miql
Is there a listing or resource of companies that actually respects its
employees' work-life balance? After this last death march of the past six
months, I'm willing to sacrifice salary for a company that plans accordingly
and is not constantly in firedrill/ASAP mode. The long hours no longer justify
the "competitive salary."

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dredmorbius
Glassdoor can at least give you some insights.

I find media-bestowed "best places to work" awards tend to be greatly
overstated.

Look for shops with people genuinely happy to do what they're doing, and
sticking with it for a long time. Often out of the limelight. Attitude toward
customers /end users is also key (it should be positive).

For a time Google seemed to have this, though I believe they're slipping.

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motters
Such practices are only likely to lead to burnout, lower quality work and high
staff turnover. All these are counter-productive for a company, especially if
they're relying upon a high level of intellectual performance from their
employees.

~~~
rpwilcox
> All these are counter-productive for a company...

In my experience, companies that deathmarch can't see past the current
deadline: "We'll deal with the repercussions of this action later, we need
results _now_ ". Which, yes, is counter productive in the long term, but they
don't care: the long term isn't even on their radar.

Be this because middle management promised the impossible to upper management
(through foolishness, incompetence, or ego), or because upper management needs
to ship PRODUCT X to meet quarterly stock market projections (again: _maximize
shareholder equity_ ): the focus is on the current deadline.

As long as the company meets that goal, everything is OK (even if - in the
process of meeting that goal - they set up smoldering fires that will need
attention in the medium term).

