Seems like everyone is working hard these days. Over the past few years the squeeze has really been put on employees as co-workers have either left their job, or transitioned to a new one. Those left behind often inherit the departed person's workload, and even if a replacement is hired they may have different work responsibilities. This lack of hiring has caused many to feel overworked, underappreciated and generally contributes to low worker moral.

But are things really that bad? Sometime last year I read a story about programmers working at Activision. The story was horrible, with mandatory overtime starting nearly at the same time as the project. This kind of environment is never sustainable in the long run and often leads to mistakes. What I find interesting is that this practice is nothing new. A month or so ago I stumbled upon Jamie Zawinski's web site where he recalls working on the Netscape project back in the mid nineties.

Surprisingly, during this time of a "dot-com bubble", when hiring was rampant, the developers of the Netscape browser found themselves overworked and underappreciated. Worst of all their browser would eventually fall to the mighty goliath called Internet Explorer. But for a time, Zawinksi and his co-workers thought they were changing the world.. or the World Wide Web at least.

So give his site a look if you're interested. It's not well organized and the narratives can be a bit long, but it's worth the read if your interested in the so-called "dream workplace" of information technology.

the netscape dorm