V2 uses a 40-hour baseline work week. Launch readiness cannot be achieved by normalizing overtime, weekend work, or hidden heroics. Production quality, retention, safety, and the no-stub oath all depend on sustainable pacing.
Baseline#
- Standard week: 40 hours.
- Planning target: 32 hours of committed delivery plus 8 hours for review, planning, support, learning, and unavoidable interrupts.
- Weekend and holiday work is prohibited except for designated on-call operations and genuine emergency exceptions.
- On-call work is scheduled, compensated, and tracked separately from normal production work.
Emergency Exception Process#
An overtime exception can be approved only for a genuine emergency:
- platform certification deadline at risk
- critical-path blocker with no viable scope reduction
- live security, privacy, payment, or safety incident
- production data loss or release-blocking build failure
Approval requires the production director, discipline lead, HR/people partner, and wellness delegate. Each exception records owner, affected team, reason, expected duration, risk if declined, scope alternatives considered, and mandatory time-off compensation.
Compensation And Recovery#
Emergency overtime creates mandatory recovery time. Comp time is scheduled in the next sprint unless the employee asks for a later date and HR approves. Repeated exceptions trigger a release-scope review before any new work can be added to the team.
Workload Monitoring#
Each discipline reports weekly hours to studio leadership. A team is flagged when average hours exceed baseline, when any individual exceeds the exception threshold, or when PTO usage drops below the mandatory minimum.
PTO#
PTO has a mandatory annual minimum, tracked usage, and carryover caps to prevent unused-time accumulation. Leads must plan coverage so PTO is used without punishing the team that remains online.
Weekend And Holiday Rule#
Weekend and holiday production work is off by default. Volunteers cannot be used to hide schedule debt. Emergency work must use the exception process, include comp time, and be visible in the workload report.