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Discussion on: What is the most overworked you've ever been?

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tammalee profile image
Tammy Lee

I started at a new job working on a pilot for a financial institution with a company who had never done anything that complicated before. Within weeks the owner of the company was screaming at us about how over budget we were. For something that had never been done before.

I stuck around (because it was interesting work!) and wound up being involved in the beta for the pilot. Again, doing something that had never been done before. The lead left for a month to get married and I was left trying to get this project into production. When he returned, he decided the project was now mine, wouldn't take over again, and quit shortly after.

Fast forward six months. I am put in charge of the final iteration of this project and given a team. Because I am trained as a programmer/systems analyst I end up doing all of the back and forth with the BA's instead of the PM, I am testing new tech ahead of my team then assigning tasks, I am pulling my own weight with coding, and four months in I've already banked all of the overtime I'm allowed and start getting it paid out.

Kudos to my team! We worked weekends, 12-16 hour days, whatever it took to get this project to completion. I bought so many bowls of pho for my coworkers and the boss gave us Starbux cards loaded with $200 at a time for our team. The client sent us a fruit bouquet to help prevent colds when we were in the final stretch. My original estimate turned out to be accurate and it cost nearly half a million dollars to create. I have never worked so hard or so focussed before in my life. Somewhere in my GitHub history, there is a stretch of 60 days in a row where I pushed code and not little snippets.

I hope I never get a project like this again. XD It was very satisfying to complete but it also took complete advantage of my mental health.

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lmuzquiz profile image
lmuzquiz

this is a great story

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tammalee profile image
Tammy Lee

FYI? We started this project in mid-April and it went live sometime in October/November/December of that same year. (Sorry, I don't remember exactly when it launched. My brain was mush by that time and my memories are mostly blurs.)

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pavelloz profile image
Paweł Kowalski • Edited

Yeah, trading health to increase chance of the projects success is a very very very bad deal. I learned that the hard way this year.