Pulling 70+

... So another company had offered me a position 2 or 3 times over the past month but I turned them down because it did not seem to be a stable company. But, last weekend, my management staff got into it with the CEO so that yesterday we were told that we are to work mandatory 10-hr days (at least ), 7 days a week, for the next 60 days or as long as it takes. We are to report our progress in the morning and then every evening. Anyone not regularly meeting their goals will be shipped out at the end. If none of us can meet our goals then the software development work will be contracted out to a firm (in INDIA !). It is beyond me how he thinks he can get ANY firm (who does not know the product!) a set of requirements as to what the customer wants if he cannot get it to his own developers so I only assume he was blowing steam.

Regardless, for quite some time now I have spent anywhere from 5 - 20 hours a week WAITING on a bottle-necked co-worker and other management to get work to me. I've even offered to do the business part for them just to get the process moving but no one had been concerned ... until now ... when I have to make up for their screw-ups with 70+ hour weeks.

The company that is pursuing me raised the offer in salary and I took it. I do not know what will happen. I actually really do like it here but it is so crazy that if they do not get their software development process under control then I do not see how they can pay me at all. It does not help that our main bottle-neck is a very angry man who rips into the rest of us on such a regular basis that I did not realize how little confidence I have left until I seriously considered changing over. I'm not sure I can even pull any weight at another company.

I've gotten very little in the way of documentation about what it is I am supposed to code. This week Mr. BottleNeck got so angry at me that he grabbed my notebook and started yelling and writing instructions about who-knows-what. I was glad to get something on paper but then he walked out the door ranting and took the darn notebook!

Since I changed careers years ago, I have been grateful to be in a field where employees are in demand but software development everywhere seems to be a large hole-in-the-pocket. No one can get the process to work and money bleeds all over the place. People think we have a high salary but they do not compare the salary / hours-worked ratio. I don't know very many people in this field who do NOT have some type of cardiovascular disease and many work 70-hour-weeks in sweat-shops as the NORM. All this and our jobs still get shipped overseas. They claim we can't develop but it is management who can't manage. Honestly, I think software developers in the US need a union.