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Productive according to what measurement? The problem is that the tech industry is still failing to measure productivity, even when people are onsite. So the

Productive according to what measurement? The problem is that the tech industry is still failing to measure productivity, even when people are onsite. So the lazy fall back is "butts in seats". If I can see you sitting in you're chair, I think you're productive. If I can't, then you are not. So, while you say you were productive while working remotely, there was some manager who thought you were doing nothing at all.

deleted 10y ago
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bpyne 10y ago
What's an objective measurement for jobs as diverse as software engineer, system administrator, computer technician, and first-tier support? The Tech Industry is made up of these roles and many more. Just take a software engineer for example. LOC is fallible in too many ways to take seriously. Number of function points coded? Number of bugs fixed? They are all very fallible. How about mentoring? How about reviewing code? How about documentation? How about professional development? Depending on the situation, reading a technical article can weigh higher than a support issue. How do you develop the weighting for the different factors? Can it be applied across organizations? To confound it further, people tend to take on work that doesn't fit their title. The smaller the organization, the larger the diversity of responsibilities. Then there are soft factors like knowing which issues to address immediately in order to keep them from percolating up to your manager, working well within a team, communicating effectively, etc. My opinion is that we are unlikely to see objective, effective measurements of productivity for the Tech Industry anytime within my employment life. It's not a failure. The number of factors involved, not to mention the ability to gather the measurements, is staggeringly complex. After all, we're not factory line workers producing pre-defined widgets.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bpyne 10y ago

What's an objective measurement for jobs as diverse as software engineer, system administrator, computer technician, and first-tier support? The Tech Industry is made up of these roles and many more. Just take a software engineer for example. LOC is fallible in too many ways to take seriously. Number of function points coded? Number of bugs fixed? They are all very fallible. How about mentoring? How about reviewing code? How about documentation? How about professional development? Depending on the situation, reading a technical article can weigh higher than a support issue. How do you develop the weighting for the different factors? Can it be applied across organizations? To confound it further, people tend to take on work that doesn't fit their title. The smaller the organization, the larger the diversity of responsibilities. Then there are soft factors like knowing which issues to address immediately in order to keep them from percolating up to your manager, working well within a team, communicating effectively, etc. My opinion is that we are unlikely to see objective, effective measurements of productivity for the Tech Industry anytime within my employment life. It's not a failure. The number of factors involved, not to mention the ability to gather the measurements, is staggeringly complex. After all, we're not factory line workers producing pre-defined widgets.