Don,
> There's another negative aspect of 80-hour weeks as a regular diet (which
> you allude to in the above paragraph): you get stupid, and make more
> mistakes. I've seen this happen in software "death marches", but I believe
> it can happen anywhere. If you think about the basic quality message of
> Deming, Crosby, et al., you can infer that there has to be a point where any
> additional productivity you gain by working more hours is offset by the
> lossage due to introduced defects and other aspects of "working dumber". As
> a personal matter, this is a lesson I've learned the hard way over the
> years.
I agree. When I left that company to go to another, I made a point of
working an _intense_ 40-hour week. I am pretty well convinced that I
accomplished more in that intense 40 hours than I did in almost any of the
70 and up hour weeks I put in at the prior place. At the end of the day, I
also felt like a human being.
That was a tough thing to get across, though, especially when I was younger
and didn't want to look like I couldn't do the work, and my management
structure viewed (and enforced) it as the norm.
Bill
-- Bill Harris Hewlett-Packard Co. R&D Engineering Processes Lake Stevens Division domain: billh@lsid.hp.com M/S 330 phone: (425) 335-2200 8600 Soper Hill Road fax: (425) 335-2828 Everett, WA 98205-1298Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>