Why constant overtime is bad for your IT company
January 21, 2008
(Some meta-info: after all these technical articles, I have decided to take a sidestep into the managerial aspect of things.)
Some managers still go by the good old “if you make your personnel work overtime, all the time, you will finish sooner”. By the same account, some people still believe that the Earth is not round. The overtime will eventually kill your company and here is why I believe so:
- People have lives. Even if you insist on hiring ambitious, single persons, they will be quickly fed up with it. If the employees have a family, you can forget about them.
- If you pay overtime, the costs mount. If you do not (legally) pay overtime, the personnel will soon feel ripped off (as in “Hey, those 4 extra hours a day kinda halve my paycheck”). If you do not pay overtime (the illegal version of it), you might have (and IMHO, you should) legal trouble.
- IT work is not like an assembly line. If you force a person to work say 12 hours a day, it does not mean that he will perform 24 man-hour work in 2 workdays. Chances are that overall fixes that will be required, will take a lot more than the extra day the poor fella “saved” your company.
- Even if the pay is good, persons will quickly fed up. After all, what use are money if you do not get to enjoy them? Even if they stick to it in a “come on, two more months of this and I get the new car”, trust me, they will leave, which leads us to…
- High turnaround. If your people are fed up with you and they have a relatively up to date skillset, prepare to say “Buh-bye” to them. Once a competitor approaches them with reasonable terms, off he goes one person who might know more for your day to day operations than your average middle manager.
- Speaking of managers, constant overtime is a sign of bad management. Even if you choose to ignore the above, if your sales people have no input from the workforce and systematically underestimate the time that is required for a given project, is bad management. If your managers have the slave-driver mentality, it is bad management. “Lowballing” projects is bad management. Hire an extra guy, even a Jr one will take some load off the other persons.
- If you still require overtime, then do the world a favor. Fire all your managers and hire competent ones. If something cannot be done in a normal 40 workweek but needs to be done within a week, you’re out of luck. Perhaps you will get away with it a few times but when you will not, it will hurt.
- While you are at it, why don’t you go ahead and fire some of the HR people? A stick in the mud (or a dick in the team) will hurt your productivity. Hiring only “cheap” persons will not save you money, as it is more likely than not that they will stall and waste time.
- 8 hours of work are usually enough for most day to day operations. Instead of asking people to work more hours, try to implement some in-house productivity measurement and have people work more those 8 hours instead. Try to identify problems in your processes and performance bottlenecks and eliminate them ASAP.
- [edit] If people do not have the time to do their own research (you did bother to hire people that do at least a bit of research in their own time, don’t you?) soon they will stagnate. OJT can only get your people so far, a bit of extra boost is needed. And yeah, if your people are working 50 hour workweeks, you can’t seriously expect them to devote hours in the weekend.
Fortunately, while I have faced most of the above, I do not have to face them now so I consider myself lucky. This is not the case with everyone and while this is no Joel’s, read it 
January 22, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Well put!
IT Shop 101: Constant overtime is not a sign, but a PROOF of bad management.
In addition to the above I will add that prolonged periods of overtime, no matter how enthusiastic people might feel about the project, make people TIRED and tired people not only perform slower but they also make mistakes more easily. Mistakes that lead to further delays and increased maintenance costs.
January 22, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I am glad that you agree! (assuming that your opinion gets translated into your workplace).
A small note, I think that I have covered the tired bit both in the sense that tired people make mistakes and that it will kill the sparkle from your engineering team.
Of course, perhaps someone should tell that to two very well know consulting firms that have in common that they take projects from the public sector, especially after the 2004 Olympic Games. (On the other hand, they are consulting firms, once the product is out of the door, good luck to the customer).
Btw, welcome to my blogroll!
March 20, 2008 at 2:30 am
You forgot one important factor. It is the “Unprepared Wannabe IT Guy” or more known as “I fix everything with hours”-man.
My theory is based in the low quantity of IT professionals in Greece. Therefore the job openings are filled with mediocre people who wants to become something. Because they’re not prepared, they put their time in order to achieve some goal. They’re also the ones who, due to the lack of preparation, can try to save their asses sucking knowledge from you.
As always, I apologize for the extremist view. But the 40 hours week should be something “forced”.
About the overtime, for me means: to loose the motivation, to hate your job, to become un-professional, to throw your life (to sell it if it’s paid) and health problems when you pass the 60 hours per week.
BTW: love those managers who ask you how much time will you need to accomplish a task, and they put exactly what you say. Of course I know what I can do and in how much time, but… err…. Mr. manager…. aren’t you paid to do those estimations? If I’m right you’re doing your job right? Then I want your money too.