Here's a strange thought. We tend to assume that people working the most hours are the most dedicated to the project. That's sometimes true, but is it always valid? Maybe most of the people who seem to be working the longest hours are the ones planning for it to fail.<p>When people are engaged and things are going well, people get a lot done. Sometimes, that involves longer-than-usual hours and sometimes it doesn't. But for the purpose of honesty, it's worth staging that long hours <i>are</i> sometimes a sign of something good-- a lot of opportunity.<p>However, it can mean the opposite. When a team or project or company is in trouble and it looks like failure is imminent, people ramp up the hours, not because they think it will prevent failure, but because they don't want to be blamed, sacrificed, demoted or fired when things go wrong enough for the knives to come out. When things go to shit, the people thrown overboard first are the ones who seem to be suffering the least.<p>When someone's working a lot because he's engaged and loves the work, that's not a bad sign. When people are visibly competing on hours, that means (to me) that they expect the project to fail. It looks like the opposite, but it's actually a vote of no confidence. As often as it means anything else, a person putting in long hours means, "I'm shoring up my image for the inevitable political fight, because shit's about to get nasty".<p>There's more to that picture. The best people, when they see what's happening, tend to disengage a bit and start thinking about other opportunities. Working 60+ hour weeks when the "prize" is an inferior version of the job they formerly had, that just doesn't appeal to them. They'd rather get away, and while they're putting themselves at some higher-than-normal risk of getting canned, by <i>not</i> competing on hours, they already have exit strategies in place. The ones who stick around tend to be, more often than not, the mediocre and political people.