Overuse of that comic is a pet-peeve of mine. That comic is about standards, which the entire point is for everyone to agree on. That doesn't apply to all products in general! The point of a database isn't for everyone to use the same product. It's to store data. It's not ironic in any way that there are multiple competing database products! It's only standards that have any irony in that fact!
Except i still don't know how i could build my own S3 or simpledb equivalent, even provided i have unlimited servers at my disposal. By looking at this project, it seems like they're trying to tacle the big problem, and that's a good thing.
Most European software teams have a strict "no over time" policy that's both respected and enforced. Some company's even turn off the Astrix and e-mail servers at night.
We all know what kind of shit code you produce after working to long, it's not helping anyone if you do that every week.
Engineering should be striving towards excellence, not creating more shit and more work for everyone.
In Austria and Germany ~40h/week work weeks are common even for developers (lived more than 8 years in both combined and worked as a programmer in several companies almost this entire time). Usually If you work more than 40h in one week you can compensate by working fewer hours in the next one.
I think this is common to all EU countries, save for maybe the UK (don't know, but they seem to be a bit less socialist than continental western europe).
The EU's Working Time Directive provides a right to work no more than 48hrs per week. In my experience, while I agree that here in the UK it's a little less socialist, I believe it's rare to see excessive hours. Most (anecdotally) office workers work around 40hrs/week; including developers and engineers.
