Overtime? Now you have two problems!
One old joke says: if you have a problem and you are going to solve it using regular expressions, then you have two problems. I think overtime is something from the same series. I would formulate it this way: if a team has a problem and it is planned to work overtime to solve it, then the team has two problems. What is the second problem?
Regular overtime has a lot of harmful consequences - both for the team and for the company. Let's consider them.
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It is obvious that people who work a lot overtime get tired, and with time fatigue turns into exhaustion, both physical and moral. Of course, for health, too little good.
The more time people spend on work, the less it is left not only to rest, but also to personal life in all its manifestations. Consequently, at work they will be less focused and more distracted. In the limit, they will inevitably start to solve personal issues during working hours, absenteeism, hospital hours and “remote work” times will become more frequent - and it will be extremely difficult to fight. The combination of these factors is called flaws (undertime).
Another obvious consequence of permanent overtime is demotivation. Who likes this race for survival? Who is pleased to hear again and again from the management “your anxiety is justified, the project will inevitably fail, but we must continue to try to write something acceptable by the deadline”? Personally, I would not want to spend a lot of time in such a company.
Over time, exhausted and lost all faith employees will begin to look for another job - and find it. As a result, implicit knowledge about what has already been done on the project will be irreversibly lost. Thus, further work will become even more complicated - people who understood what and how it is spinning here no longer work.
When deadlines are tight, and no one has the strength, first of all they sacrifice quality. This is normal - we all know about technical duty (a metaphor for the results of careless design and development of the system), and this time you can owe a little - we will pay off later, right? Not. Companies that consider overtime as a normal problem solving will never return this debt. Negligence today means a few more urgent bugs tomorrow, which will have to deal with in the same mode. In addition, the quality of the code itself deteriorates, it becomes harder to refine, and the changes take even more time.
It becomes more difficult to predict the further development of the project. In the middle of the next stage or project, an error from the previous one may suddenly come out and derail it. In addition, due to the complexity of recording time spent on hard work, it becomes more difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of a team in normal mode. The schedule for the following projects is becoming increasingly unreliable. However, you can not worry about it, you can always work overtime to catch up with the schedule ... Damn. Somewhere I have already heard.
Well, go to the next level. Who in your company is called to work overtime? Usually they are not developers, but managers, either asking for, or demanding labor feats. From the point of view of the team, they make sacrifices in order to rescue the management from the trap they fell into because of their inability to plan work or communicate with clients. This is only partially true: the forced unpredictability of a team that fell into this vicious circle leaves the manager only the choice of a random period, not too offensive for the client and plausible for the team. But this is not a problem for developers - although developers can provide ideas for technical implementation or a change in approach to help solve it, this is a business problem. Once things have gone bad - for one reason or another - plans need to be changed. In such a situation, a triangle of opportunities, costs and deadlines is usually considered - but there is no overtime in it.
Why is this problem not notified to the client? Because this is a difficult conversation, and most people (including managers) are afraid of such conversations and avoid them at all costs. It is easier to say “run for work!” To the team than “we cannot do it” to the client. In fact, it is necessary to talk about such things - a good relationship with the client should be based on respect, trust and openness, including in those moments when things are going badly.
It should be noted that if it came to such a conversation, it does not matter who is to blame. It should not be about wine, but about the current objective situation and what to do with it. Then there will be time to discuss where and what can be improved in the process of work so that the situation does not happen again, but this is a completely different story.
What if a client insists on team overtime? In fact, there are managers for this - they must explain to the client the possible side effects of such a decision. In addition, the client must compensate for the additional costs incurred, the time to recover and the time spent on working off the technical debt accumulated during this time. Good managers will always convince the client that overtime is a downward ladder.
Now the original joke can be rephrased even more precisely. When managers encounter a problem in planning, they think, “Oh, instead of a business conversation with a client, I’ll just make the team work overtime.” Now they have a lot of unpredictable problems that come back in the future at the most unexpected moment, an exhausted team on the verge of rebellion and a disgruntled client who does not trust the team.
Do you still want to work overtime?
It should be noted that this is not about occasional overtime, when the bug is detected on the eve of the project launch and it really needs to be fixed right now, but about regular overtime, when they “cure” the backlog for a month or two or simply use it as a tool to reduce development time when planning. It takes from 2 to 6 weeks for the team to wear out additional work, while the first week is characterized by a surge in productivity. In addition, overtime on the initiative of the team and on orders from above - these are two big differences, which should also be taken into account.
Much has been said about the dangers of overtime, but this article caught me with 100% accuracy in describing the situation of one team, which I have the opportunity to observe. Regular (paid, but compulsory) work on weekends, “no one goes home until the error is corrected,” the eternal “who is to blame?” Instead of “what to do?” ... Three months later, the team “1 manager + 5 executors” left three performers, the remaining symptoms are also evident. And yes, I would not want to work in such a team :-)
Regular overtime has a lot of harmful consequences - both for the team and for the company. Let's consider them.
Exhaustion
')
It is obvious that people who work a lot overtime get tired, and with time fatigue turns into exhaustion, both physical and moral. Of course, for health, too little good.
Flaws
The more time people spend on work, the less it is left not only to rest, but also to personal life in all its manifestations. Consequently, at work they will be less focused and more distracted. In the limit, they will inevitably start to solve personal issues during working hours, absenteeism, hospital hours and “remote work” times will become more frequent - and it will be extremely difficult to fight. The combination of these factors is called flaws (undertime).
Demotivation
Another obvious consequence of permanent overtime is demotivation. Who likes this race for survival? Who is pleased to hear again and again from the management “your anxiety is justified, the project will inevitably fail, but we must continue to try to write something acceptable by the deadline”? Personally, I would not want to spend a lot of time in such a company.
Staff turnover and loss of implicit knowledge
Over time, exhausted and lost all faith employees will begin to look for another job - and find it. As a result, implicit knowledge about what has already been done on the project will be irreversibly lost. Thus, further work will become even more complicated - people who understood what and how it is spinning here no longer work.
Loss of quality and technical debt
When deadlines are tight, and no one has the strength, first of all they sacrifice quality. This is normal - we all know about technical duty (a metaphor for the results of careless design and development of the system), and this time you can owe a little - we will pay off later, right? Not. Companies that consider overtime as a normal problem solving will never return this debt. Negligence today means a few more urgent bugs tomorrow, which will have to deal with in the same mode. In addition, the quality of the code itself deteriorates, it becomes harder to refine, and the changes take even more time.
Unpredictability
It becomes more difficult to predict the further development of the project. In the middle of the next stage or project, an error from the previous one may suddenly come out and derail it. In addition, due to the complexity of recording time spent on hard work, it becomes more difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of a team in normal mode. The schedule for the following projects is becoming increasingly unreliable. However, you can not worry about it, you can always work overtime to catch up with the schedule ... Damn. Somewhere I have already heard.
Managers and customers
Well, go to the next level. Who in your company is called to work overtime? Usually they are not developers, but managers, either asking for, or demanding labor feats. From the point of view of the team, they make sacrifices in order to rescue the management from the trap they fell into because of their inability to plan work or communicate with clients. This is only partially true: the forced unpredictability of a team that fell into this vicious circle leaves the manager only the choice of a random period, not too offensive for the client and plausible for the team. But this is not a problem for developers - although developers can provide ideas for technical implementation or a change in approach to help solve it, this is a business problem. Once things have gone bad - for one reason or another - plans need to be changed. In such a situation, a triangle of opportunities, costs and deadlines is usually considered - but there is no overtime in it.
Why is this problem not notified to the client? Because this is a difficult conversation, and most people (including managers) are afraid of such conversations and avoid them at all costs. It is easier to say “run for work!” To the team than “we cannot do it” to the client. In fact, it is necessary to talk about such things - a good relationship with the client should be based on respect, trust and openness, including in those moments when things are going badly.
It should be noted that if it came to such a conversation, it does not matter who is to blame. It should not be about wine, but about the current objective situation and what to do with it. Then there will be time to discuss where and what can be improved in the process of work so that the situation does not happen again, but this is a completely different story.
What if a client insists on team overtime? In fact, there are managers for this - they must explain to the client the possible side effects of such a decision. In addition, the client must compensate for the additional costs incurred, the time to recover and the time spent on working off the technical debt accumulated during this time. Good managers will always convince the client that overtime is a downward ladder.
Conclusion
Now the original joke can be rephrased even more precisely. When managers encounter a problem in planning, they think, “Oh, instead of a business conversation with a client, I’ll just make the team work overtime.” Now they have a lot of unpredictable problems that come back in the future at the most unexpected moment, an exhausted team on the verge of rebellion and a disgruntled client who does not trust the team.
Do you still want to work overtime?
Translator comment
It should be noted that this is not about occasional overtime, when the bug is detected on the eve of the project launch and it really needs to be fixed right now, but about regular overtime, when they “cure” the backlog for a month or two or simply use it as a tool to reduce development time when planning. It takes from 2 to 6 weeks for the team to wear out additional work, while the first week is characterized by a surge in productivity. In addition, overtime on the initiative of the team and on orders from above - these are two big differences, which should also be taken into account.
Much has been said about the dangers of overtime, but this article caught me with 100% accuracy in describing the situation of one team, which I have the opportunity to observe. Regular (paid, but compulsory) work on weekends, “no one goes home until the error is corrected,” the eternal “who is to blame?” Instead of “what to do?” ... Three months later, the team “1 manager + 5 executors” left three performers, the remaining symptoms are also evident. And yes, I would not want to work in such a team :-)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/107556/
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