[drewg123]

Indeed, I had a separate room for my office, and tried to work a strict 8am->5pm schedule Mon-Fri.

However, that all fell apart during a major crunch time where we were trying to ship a chronically late product, and for that period of time, my work life balance was essentially destroyed.

[Raphmedia]

While crunch time are necessary sometime, you should do your best to balance things out. Worked extra hard all week? Take half the next week off and go camping.

[drewg123]

It was more like a 14 month death march of 100+ hour weeks, so there really was no "next week", as there was no end in sight for most of it. That's what it is like with hardware, especially late hardware that the entire company is riding on.

After the thing finally shipped, most of the team effectively took off the next 4 months, working ~4 hours or fewer hours a day, etc. But those 14 months were hell.

[icebraining]

14 months working 100+ hours a week... Why would people in this field subject themselves to that? I frankly don't understand. What kept them on?