Productivity, Long build cycles and working 24x7
Just kind of weird to think about how some of us work. Maybe it is a computer thing, maybe not. Dan and I both work pretty much 7 days a week. Well I work 6, and Dan usually 7. He works late at night and I work early in the morning... plus our normal "you have to be at work from 9 - 4, even if you put in overtime and work other times".

Why do we do it? First because it is "fun". Hey, good thing I love what I do. Second because it is just way more productive. The Infrastructure now takes about 4 hours to build under normal system loads. That means if we get a compile error in the build and then kick off another full build, we'll get maybe 2 of those in, in a day. Well if Dan is kicking them off late, and I'm kicking them off early, we can get a few extra builds in. Add the weekend in, when nothing would "normally" happen, and you just end up with many more cycles.

This AM I got on around 6 and saw a problem with the build. Just a couple of minor things. Put in the fix in about 20 minutes and kicked another build off. About 2.5 hours later it was done (since the system wasn't under much stress being as no one was on it). If we worked "normally", then it probably would have gotten fixed and rebuilt on Monday morning, finishing up around noon or so. Pretty much 1/2 a day wasted.

Yeah... we don't have to work overtime, and yeah, we don't have to work weekends... but if we didn't, much less would get done. It isn't that working for 30 minutes on Saturday morning buys you 30 more minutes... it can buy you 4 hours. And not just for you, but for the entire team. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it happens in cycles. Some times on a weekend we'll get several builds in. I may do something early, Dan will do something mid day and maybe that night, etc.

Working 5x8 just gives you so many less cycles than working out-of-normal hours. Not that we are working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.... but checking things here and there "constantly" can really improve the productivity.