Bitten Off

Just a note.

If you're a software or web development shop, and you're having to call in significant numbers of your crew on the weekend to work 12-14 hour days for multiple weekends in a row... You've bitten off more than you can chew, and you need to back the fuck up and figure out what's gone wrong.

Here's one possibility: Maybe you should actually listen to your crew when they tell you that they can't add "just one more" feature and still meet the build deadline.

Matt did not get to sleep in, or enjoy the gorgeous weather this weekend, or play with the kids for more than about ten minutes a day. The kids did not get to go to the library or the park, and they spent way more time being told "Be quiet, Daddy's on the phone" than kids under 10 should. I did not get to go to the gym or shopping for a new pair of jeans.

Oh, and the build? Still had to be delayed. Grrrr. Seriously, if this happens again next weekend, I'll be tempted to head down there to give them a piece of my mind. I could go into detail about exactly what's going wrong over there, that this is happening, but it would just irritate me again to no good purpose.

On the plus side, the kids were fantastically good (with allowances for their respective ages, of course, but still!) and even Alex was patient with me having to lug him all over town to run errands. And the weather was amazing, so Penny spent a lot of time running around outside with Ray from next door, which cut down somewhat on the number of times I had to tell her to be quiet, and we had the windows in the house open, so Matt at least got fresh air, if not sunshine.