The Work Environment

My working environment is stressful and busy, because almost all of my colleagues have a heavy workload and can't care about other things except their own tasks. I feel the circumstances of IT engineers in both the U.S. and Japan are similar to mine. The most serious problem, I think, is overwork.

It seems that almost all IT engineers work until or past midnight with no days off. Executives admire engineers who work with no days off. Edward Yordon, who is a famous IT consultant, made a sarcastic remark about the work environment in his book Death March: "The 'Marine Corps' Mentality: Real Programmers Don't Need Sleep." 

To my mind, overwork leads to many problems: a decrease in efficiency, damage to engineers' health, and so on. I suppose the root cause is companies' culture of the line of IT. I hope company executives come to realize the disadvantages of working extremely hard.