

The "Spanish Theory" of software project management - damian2000
http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/03/every-software-project-ive-worked-on.html

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stef25
I'm in a situation now where, instead of walking 10min / day back and forth to
the office my boss is expecting me to commute on buses and trains 4hrs / day
(not exaggerating).

I consider this extra commuting time as unpaid overtime (up to 20hrs a week,
even though I'm not "working") and hence want to deal with it as this article
says I should: "No way, I quit".

Yet I feel bad about this; what would you do?

~~~
defen
A daily four hour commute is horrifically bad for your health (both mental and
physical). You absolutely should not feel bad about quitting or demanding to
be allowed to telecommute.

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qntm
> In practice what this often means for the developer is unpaid overtime (also
> known as "crunch time"), something very familiar to game developers, and
> also common in traditional software development, as the project nears its
> deadline. But those unpaid hours are actually costing you, the developer,
> because you can't get them back.

Sure you can. A good employer will give you time off in lieu later.

Of course, an even better employer would never let it come to that.

~~~
ojbyrne
In days of yore they had a mechanism so that if an employer ever let it come
to that, there would be financial repercussions.

I believe they called it "time and a half."

~~~
qntm
Point being, no amount of money can replace time spent off work with your
family. What are you going to do, pay your spouse and children as an
alternative to actually eating dinner with them? Only replacement time can
make up for that sacrifice.

~~~
ojbyrne
Actually my point was, that rather than an absolute ("no amount of time can
replace time spent off work with family"), there was a market mechanism that
did a pretty good job of letting individual employees/employers manage the
tradeoffs between work and non-work. Somehow (Republicans) that mechanism
became deprecated, and has been replaced by conflict and bullshit.

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josemariaruiz
There even a not written rule in Spanish companies: «you never leave the work
office before your boss». Effort in Spain only correlates to the time spent in
the office and not with results. That is the reason why telecommuting never
really took off in Spain.

~~~
astrofinch
Let's go disrupt their economy.

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josemariaruiz
I'm Spanish and I approve this article!

I didn't knew that there was a "Spanish Management Theory" ;), it seems we are
just giving the world awesome things... like the Spanish Flu.

~~~
tropin
Except the only relation between the Spanish Flu and Spain was that Spanish
newspapers were the firsts writing about it, as they weren't as censored as
the ones published in countries fighting WWI.

~~~
mahmud
They nap in the afternoon, they publish uncensored news .. is there anything
those Spaniards are good for?

~~~
josemariaruiz
And you forgot about food and weather ;)

~~~
nakkiel
Not to mention the friendly late-evening dinner in the summer. Suddenly
missing Northern Spain and Southern France :(

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mathattack
I was a bignpropknent of OT for non managers since they have less control. The
danger with paying managers OT is every hour they do "make work" causes the
organization to spend 10 more so you don't want to invent that. OT policies
encourage managers to properly staff from the start.

~~~
Drbble
Your concern applies only any creative professional work where time input and
work output are not clearly correlated, not just management, though.

~~~
mathattack
The challenge with management is the costs of waste get externalized and
multiplied.

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Gravityloss
Umm, didn't England (and later Scotland) exactly extract the wealth from the
ground, in the form of coal, which enabled the industrial revolution.

Spanish coal on the other hand seems difficult to mine.

Cue Jared Diamond and all that "there's actually a reason for that" can of
worms.

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cantrevealname
This meme about how unfair it is that programmers work unpaid overtime is
starting to drive me nuts.

I've been in big stodgy software company where everyone worked exactly 8
hours, and the whole company filed out the door at 5pm as if a factory whistle
had blown. I've also worked at a smallish software company where the norm was
at least 10 or 11 hours a day, and half the programmers came in on Saturdays
and Sundays (and I did too).

I much preferred the latter. Why? The work was more interesting, and the
programmers were smarter (and nicer!), but the main reason I preferred it is,
"What's the alternative for my free time?"

What do you really do with the rest of the day? Yeah, sure, you have great
"personal life with your family". But really, the typical programmer at BOTH
companies was single, didn't have a girlfriend, and didn't have many friends.

The free time was wasted on video games, lots and lots of video games,
mindless chatter at a bar, watching team sports,... you get idea.

Let's stop with the whining and sniveling about unpaid overtime among
programmers. The average programmer is well paid, his work is usually
interesting, and his free time will be squandered (applies to me too). I
prefer to be at work where at least I'm doing something real.

~~~
jt2190
It appears that your comment has been taken the wrong way... I _think_ what
you're saying is this:

* It's more fun (for you) to work with people who _like_ to program and ship software than it is to work with people who just program to pay their bills and would rather be anywhere else than at work.

When employees care about solving problems, they put in extra hours sometimes.
Managers have the problem of making sure that team members don't burn
themselves out. At these companies you see things like as much time off as you
want, work what hours you want, work where you want. There's no need to make
people work.

When employees don't care, they spend lots of time in the office getting
coffee, checking email, IM chatting, surfing the web, having endless meetings
arguing about whether or not source control is a good idea, etc. The managers
there have the problem of getting the staff to do any real work at all.

For an employee who wants to work at one kind of company, it's _very_
frustrating to work at the other kind.

~~~
_delirium
Many really good people who love to program, though, don't necessarily love to
spend 100% of their time programming one thing. Lots of strong, motivated
programmers work on open-source projects and other side projects in addition
to their day job, and try to avoid companies where excessive crunch-time would
make that impossible.

