Working in software development has its benefits, and its drawbacks (though more benefits than drawbacks). One of the drawbacks is weekend work. It wasn’t frequent, but it did occur.

When a project is complete, it needs to be introduced into the production environment, or “made live”, so users can actually use all the new functionality that was coded. Think of it like a iOS, Android, or other update that happens on a smartphone. We call this “implementation”.

The problem is that implementation gets done when the fewest users are on the system so as to have the least amount of impact. And that was overnight Saturday to Sunday. While I was fortunate enough to never have to do the graveyard shift – midnight to six AM window (not that there’s anything wrong with it) – I do work Sunday mornings usually starting at 8:00 AM. If we are lucky, we were done by noon. Sometimes there are issues when verification is being done, and that causes implementation to run longer.

This Sunday work sometimes interfered with social activities, but not too often because: 1) it was so early on a Sunday morning, and 2) it wasn’t too often. (A coworker and I alternate coverage so we went from quarterly implementations to semiannual ones). But every once in a while we would have to not visit family because I was scheduled to do coverage.

This does count as overtime. But since I am a salaried employee, there is no additional compensation for it. It is informally counted as “comp time”, meaning “hey, I’m going to head out an hour early on Friday because I worked four hours last weekend.”

I know there are some jobs, especially retail and food service, where weekend work is probably considered the normal. I appreciate those that have those requirements, but our work environment is a more typical Monday through Friday, 8:00 to 5:00.

Regardless, though, who wants to work on a weekend after having worked a full workweek anyway? I know that certainly is something I won’t miss.