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I had developed some novel aircraft telemetry monitoring analysis code for my current employer - who did not pay well and my manager treated me like a second class citizen because I impressed his manager with my working code. Anyway, that's another story. Needless to say I was looking for another job to escape to.
I went for an interview with another company doing similar work on helicopters, not a direct rival. I spent all day there meeting managers and engineers who all treated me with respect and friendly professionalism. They went into great detail about how they did their telemetry work. They bought me lunch at their canteen and talked a lot about what I had developed. A few of the questions were along the lines of, "We have a problem doing X, how would you solve it?" This was a great bragging opportunity for me as I was a young programmer who hadn't ever been treated this well in my current position. After lunch one of their engineers came up with some follow-up questions, based on my answers earlier. They then asked if I could meet with more of their people tomorrow and offered to put me up at hotel overnight. I realized they weren't interviewing me, they were picking my brains on how to solve issues they had - I was being used as an unpaid consultant (not counting lunch and hotel expenses). I was quite shocked as they had appeared to be a large, reputable company.
At this point, I had been there over six hours and, as the technical questions got very specific, I said I couldn't say any more due to confidentiality and security restrictions. They immediately wrapped up the questioning and started talking about when I could start and hinting at how much they would pay me, even offering some minimal relocation expenses. It turns out they paid as poorly as my current employer and the relocation expenses was an advance on my salary which I would have to pay back over a year. I made excuses about catching the last train (I actually drove down) and made an exit. A random guy working in the office was assigned to escort me off site and I chatted with him. He quite openly referred to the company as interesting to work for when things went well for but a "skinflint" operation who often fired people who complained too much and that things hadn't been going well recently.
I obviously didn't take the job and, in less than a year, the company went bankrupt and were bought out by a foreign rival. Maybe I could have saved them with my technical knowledge and amazing code skills, but probably not.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I am not surprised. Although I have never experienced that myself.
One time I did have access to another companies internal code (with NDA of course), to help me develop a means of communicating with it. Their code was actually very well written. I did a code review and found a few bugs that they were unaware of. Their lead engineer was surprise and happy that I found them and thanked me publicly via their company email w/CC's. It is always nice to get credit from strangers that you have never actually met.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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No but I have had someone claim my entire job, I had a contract with Dell Australia leading a small team of 4, a year after the contract finished successfully I happened across the junior devs linkedin profile where he claimed he was the lead developer on the project.
I let him live as he had moved to the US and was concentrating on sharepoint, which he was welcome to.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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30 years ago, I once sat down an wrote a flat DB style coding library. I did not stop or sleep for three days (72+ hours). When it was finished, and fully tested, I finally crashed. It took me another 3 or 4 days to fully recover from that incident. Being occasionally obsessive compulsive does have it draw backs. 
I have not and do not ever intend to break that record. 
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Drift into work around the usual 9:15, pull an all-nighter while in the zone, and leave early the next day, so maybe 31 hours. But it happened several times.
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Any Student: I once coded for three minutes straight!
Then I headed for QA ...
And they count "opening VS and staring blankly at the homework question" as "coding". 
Me? I'm not sure: I remember one whole-weekend session, so that would have been Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and then some of Monday - about 60 hours?
I don't do those any more!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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All at once without a "break"?
Coming at or 07:00 or 07:15 am and leaving at 03:30 am
Considering a block over more than a day?
A week with 93 work hours.
John R. Shaw wrote: I have not and do not ever intend to break that record.
Same here... I do not have any intention of trying to get even close to those two "records"
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I have successfully blocked them out in hopes of never repeating them.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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I have never practiced "death march" programming. After about 12 hours the number of bugs and poor coding introduced starts rising, so your real productivity goes down.
The longest programming session that I remember is 16 hours straight, after which I had lots of poor code to rewrite.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Good point, but it depends on your state of mind at the time. I will admit that my rate of production may have slowed down a bit, but there was no known bugs by the time I was done.
I was once brought in to write what was essentially a message server (they called it an email server at the time) and I had less than 2.5 days to do it. The company I worked for provided the satellite up-link for a service company that just went out of business. Which met that in 3 days their biggest customer would lose all the services they provided via us. Our company decided it wanted to take their place, after all we were the ones actually transporting the data. So the called me because they knew I was programming on the side. I spent about 20 hours the first day, before being to tired to continue. They got me a room at a hotel near by, so I could recover. By the end of the 2nd day, they had a program, complete with a UI, that could do the job. I doubt if it is still being use, but I know that it never failed (crashed or otherwise).
Before I was in corporate programming, I did not understand why so many of their programs were buggy. Afterwards, I was surprise that so many of them actually worked. The attitude that we want it now, so someone above you can get a speed bonus has cost companies more money than any thing I can think of.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Working in the ( machine ) shop, moderate physical activity, need to stay alert, but often not _really_ think, at 14 hours we were definitely getting stupid. Only did that a few times, that when I was 30. Coding, I'd be going in circles _much_ sooner.
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You're right. John is wrong. Even on Gallons of coffee, or other "uppers" the quality of output has to decrease rapidly. Something to do with brain chemistry, I'm sure.
9 to 10 hours a day is the most I can do. And I take several coffee breaks.
I have given up eating lunch at my desk, life is too short.
My brain tracks are defective. My train of thought is constantly getting derailed.
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I have never understood this. At 5pm my brain shuts down. Literially! I cannot do anything that remotely resembles work after 5pm. I am very good from about 4am on. I almost always am awake at 5am and doing something. But after about 12 hours I am done.
I had a boss once that wanted to force me and others to work past 5pm on projects. around 430 or 5 my brain starts going offline. I would be sitting there at 530 or 6 just staring at the computer just taking up space. He was pissed. Yelled at me. I got up and went home. Next day I had a meeting with his boss. I explained that I cannot think past a certain time. Just can't happen. Brain doesn't work that way. At least mine. He asked how long I had been at work. I said I came in around 530am. yesterday and today. He looked at my boss and let him know in no uncertain terms that after 10 hours. Employees are allowed to leave for the day. No questions asked. That ended that discussion.
I didn't stay in that job 6 more months. There were other things with the boss that weren't fun. Too bad because the company itself was pretty good as a whole. Just that boss drove me out.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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When you keep regular hours, your subconscious brain becomes accustom to them. So unless you are a major roll and stop looking at the clock, it says that's enough - go home.
Working long hours on a regular bases is a bad idea. That has burned out a lot of programmers; they just could not stand it any longer.
I reached that point once. I had not taken a vacation for years, just a few days off every now and then. When I was reaching my breaking point and ask for a few weeks off, the manager said to finish my latest project first and I can have all the time I want. What he did not understand was that "it was not a want", "it was a necessity". I went home, but I did not come back. I did not even turn on my home system for 6 months. No internet, not email, no games, no nothing. Then I started looking for a new job.
They did bring my back a few times to modify some other software I had developed for them. But I never touched their main product again and when I check, 5 years later, they were still using the previous version. They never brought anyone in to complete my work, not even me. 
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Nothing like you guys are reporting. Early in my career, I put in some fairly long weeks (~80 hours) occasionally.
Quickly, I realized that there was no discernable difference in my rewards for being extra-diligent and quit doing that. "XYZ has fallen behind, we need you to come in and save the day...again," gets old real fast.
To be fair, I was always a LOB coder for companies, not doing personal projects that I might've gotten into personally.
I also don't want to give the impression that I was a slacker. I took my job very seriously, and spent much of my off time thinking about designs and how to write more efficient/more reliable systems. As for the actual coding, though, an employer is paying for ~40 hours of my time each week, and that's what they got.
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As a friend of mine once said. Just because we are not sitting in front of a computer, it does not mean we are not working.
FYI: Albert Einstein was know to take long walks to clear his head and just think.
When I first started designing and coding for a living, I would work a ridiculously large number of hours. What ever it took to meet my personal timeline. Therefore, the company decide to switch me to salary without an increase in pay. A funny thing happen then, I found myself with about 20 more hours a week of free time.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Maybe I can count myself as "fortunate" for never having to put in those sorts of long consecutive hours.
However, I have worked full 7-day weeks for 3 straight weeks before. Once in my 20s - even though I had the stamina back then, it still got to me. If that makes me a lightweight, then call me a lightweight - I don't care.
Last time was just a few months ago. I'm now in my late 40s, and shortly after I told my boss this could not happen again. The stress was seriously getting to me. Bad hearts run in the family, and I have uncles who have described strokes to me and what I felt at one point wasn't all that different. No paycheck is worth that. Especially when, in this business, there's no such thing as "being paid overtime".
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That 72 hour session was by choice. That was back when I was young and teaching myself how to program, in C, by doing. Back then, I did not purchase other peoples libraries. When I needed something, I just did some research and wrote it myself.
A few years ago, I was approached by a company who had a policy of working long hours. They would run 2 80 hour week sprints. Take a few weeks off and then go back into another design and implement phase of 80 hour weeks. When I was young I probably would have went for it, because I normally spent those types of hours in front of a screen. Being older now, I just thought that was nuts. Sure you had more off time, but you were killing yourself to get it. Personally I do not think it was worth it.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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OMG, we are talking like 1992-1993... We needed to implement some crazy stuff in our software to be considered for one of the biggest deals (nation wide company), but we were missing 3 key features, and they gave us a week to implement them all. Demo on Friday.
I was literally pulling every shift I could muster, like 48hrs, 6hr sleep cycle, back 24hrs, 6hr sleep, back, 16hrs work, 8hrs sleep, back. It was INSANE. I delivered on Thursday night to the team, they called the company, and I went home and basically slept the long weekend.
I remember wanting to die on Monday... Where I was told the prospect said: "OMG, we are blown away that you were able to add all of that functionality in 1 week. We assumed you would fail, so we already built the 20 computers we needed with the OTHER software our team will evaluate, and we don't have time to put your software into the mix!"
It was a rude awakening. I was proud of everything, except the result, and the lack of a life that I realized I apparently had! Pulling future all-nighters became an incredibly rare thing. Only if we were down... NEVER on the "promise" of deal.
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Memory lane.
I remember doing things like that in the 90's to. That is actually how I got my first job. I was brought in to recreate 6 months work to meet their deadline, which was 3 weeks away. It seems they pissed off the previous developer and he left the company with the company laptop, the only place were the code existed. I have no idea what the previous coder wrote, all I know is I had something tested and in-place before the dead line. It was not my best work, but it kept the company for losing their contact. And they decided to hire me at double what I was getting payed at my regular job.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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114 hours. Was ridiculous. Was doing triple shot lattes to stay awake. Once done I found my back had totally seized up and an ambulance had to take me to the hospital.
Never again.
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And here I thought I was nuts.
I once had a 2 day emergency development session and my doctor read me the riot act. Because he was treating me for some issue at the time and going without sleep was detrimental to my health. It is just difficult to turn your employer down when he offers you double time pay for two days work.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Early in my career I did a 20+ hour Friday. When I got back to work on Monday and started working on the code again I found way to many "What was I thinking??" pieces of code. I decided then to NOT do that again.
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Y'know, I just don't get this. I've stayed up 'til 0100 or so a few times, but never an all-nighter, never a 72-hour binge. My brain can't usually do code after about 10 PM. I do get up in the morning, go to work, and start straight in on coding again after 6 hours of sleep.
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