On sustainable development
July 13, 2009 - 3 Comments - development process company culture
Josh Susser at has_many :through has a great post about Discipline and creativity in the software industry. I find his comments on a sustainable development pace particularly striking:
One of the things I like best about working at Pivotal is that we consistently work at a sustainable pace. I can’t believe how many startups advertise jobs where they say that they expect you to work “startup hours”. I won’t even consider working at a place like that ever again. It’s not just because I don’t like working that way myself, but because I think companies that expect and require that kind of pace from their developers are just going to screw themselves and burn out their developers. They’ll either get real about what they can sustain, fail, or figure out how to deal with a high attrition/turnover rate.
I have had the experience of working at a startup which always demanded “startup hours” between tight, overlapping deadlines and indecisive clients, coupled with an organizational failure to adequately respond to their ever-fluctuating requirements. For the kicker, the company…
