Ade in Business

The enterprising journey of a web developer

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A lot of hours

November 15th, 2006 · 4 Comments

I’ve been putting in a lot of hours lately … at least I thought. I still have my weekends and a few nights a week. I’m lucky to have friends who sacrifice their free time to show me that I still have it good.

One friend got a call a couple Fridays ago to go help a customer with a critical server that had gone down. He ended up working Friday morning through Saturday afternoon, for a total of 31 straight hours.

Another friend had a week recently where he logged over 110 hours — an average of 16 hour days for 7 days straight. One of his working days was 22 hours long, with the 23rd hour spent going home to freshen up, and the 24th spent on the phone with his boss. It’s even more nightmarish seen in the context that his normal week is probably 60+ hours.

My competitive nature will take a hiatus for now — I will not try to top either of them.

Anyone else going through similar work binges?

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4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Ed Illig // Nov 21, 2006 at 9:08 pm

    Not of late, but I did log 600 hours of “unpaid” overtime one year at my first job. That’s the equivalent of 15 additional 40 hour weeks added to a work year—for nothing. Lucky for me I was a workaholic. :) But still, blech.

  • 2 chrisp // Nov 24, 2006 at 2:42 am

    Well it’s 2:42 in the am after Thanksgiving and I’m working on a launch. That pretty much says it all.

  • 3 ade // Nov 24, 2006 at 9:58 am

    Ouch.

  • 4 Anne // Dec 10, 2006 at 11:16 pm

    i did work 27 hours straight one shift in October to see an African Lionness through a full hysterectomy and intensive care recovery throughout the night. Several night checks from 10pm to 12am for part of the month after my 8-5 hour days caught up with me. Luckily, my big cats are my babies, so it is nothing you haven’t done since Kai was born. However, I can say it was probably a little scarier for me being alone in a Lion House in the middle of the night not being able to turn any lights on to avoid light induced seizuring. If software developing doesn’t work out for you, I have an idea for a horror movie taking place in the dark in a Big Cat House when you can hear the tigers breathing around you, but you can’t see them.

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