Whew, been a hard couple of weeks of crunch time on our project.  We have a pretty important internal milestone coming up and we decided to put in some extra time to get it stabilized and in shape.  Crunch time at Ensemble is pretty tame compared to other places I've worked... typically no more than a couple of weeks at a time, well spaced throughout the lifetime of the project when we just need a little extra punch to tie things off.  It is amazing what a hard deadline and increased coordination can do to cause some decisions to get made and get stuff actually in the game.

We also bring food in, which is bad for my waistline but very convenient and a nice touch of respect that the company has for our time.  Typically official crunch hours are 10 AM to 10 PM, Monday through Thursday, with Fridays being regular hours and weekends off.  Of course, some individuals work longer hours than that based on what they're doing -- if I'm in the zone I will often just stay until 2 AM, because at that point I've missed my window of opportunity for going home to see my family.

A far cry from the 100 hour week death marches we did at Looking Glass.  It's an interesting philosophical question as to whether or not removal of all crunch time would be desirable (or effective) but the way Ensemble handles it seems like a pretty good mix of practicality and long term health to me.