4 ms·

You should still be able to recount what you did, past tense. "This morning I sketched out three different possibilities for the new client check-in service. F

You should still be able to recount what you did, past tense. "This morning I sketched out three different possibilities for the new client check-in service. First draft of the spec is in progress, I expect to send it over to Jen and Andy tomorrow for their feedback." "I made a dozen or so mockups for the new landing page. I have a couple more ideas I want to try out tomorrow, then I'll figure out what the best four or five are and show them to the team." "Since we don't have any feature work pending right now, I've been experimenting on a branch with using $TOOL to do $THING better. It looks good because $X, although $Y might be a problem." "We talked a while ago about doing $THING with the user's documents so they can $WHATEVER more easily, and I wasn't sure it was even possible. I've been looking into that today. It looks like there might be a way, so I'm continuing to investigate." "We've wanted to replace $FRAMEWORK for a while now. I've identified the parts of it that we actually use, and I'm putting together a plan for what we can swap in and/or get rid of. It looks like, since we made $CHANGE last month, we can actually do most of it ourselves without much trouble."

jodrellblank 8y ago
That sure sounds like a day of productive work or a day of doing nothing being covered over with some made up fluff. One or the other.
- ska 8y ago
  It doesn't really matter which. Look, if I'm leading a group like this, I'm going to have an idea of what your output is like in an average sense, both compared to your historical output and the group as a whole. If you blow off a day it's not really going to matter. (although I'd rather you tell me you needed to blow off a day than try and hide it, sure). However, if you blow of enough days we're going to have a conversation about how your performance is dropping, and why, and discuss your ideas about how to turn that around. If it doesn't, we'll have another conversation, and so on. Eventually if none of this works we'll have a different conversation (about why you are leaving). This doesn't actually have anything to do with reviewing daily/weekly reports. Those are for different things.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- matwood 8y ago
  Starting from the standpoint that your peers or reports are lying to you is never going to work. Treating people like kids means you'll get kid level responses. If someone is lying, it will eventually come out. That fake report one day will turn into a week and eventually they will get fired. But, don't kill your entire team on the off chance that someone is trying to game the system.
- wool_gather 8y ago
  Assuming that you really think that the members of your team are lying to you like this, it's easy enough to validate. The first one says they're writing a spec. Well, three days later, where's that spec? Next one is producing some designs, so same. Sure someone saying "$TOOL/$NEW_FUNCTION/$REPLACE_FRAMEWORK just didn't work out", could be cover for "I was playing Pac-man all day", but if you ask for details, BS should become clear pretty quickly. And again, that's starting from the position that you think your teammates are probably slackers who would rather lie than work. Which is not really a great position to hold, IMO.

jodrellblank 8y ago

That sure sounds like a day of productive work or a day of doing nothing being covered over with some made up fluff. One or the other.

ska 8y ago
It doesn't really matter which. Look, if I'm leading a group like this, I'm going to have an idea of what your output is like in an average sense, both compared to your historical output and the group as a whole. If you blow off a day it's not really going to matter. (although I'd rather you tell me you needed to blow off a day than try and hide it, sure). However, if you blow of enough days we're going to have a conversation about how your performance is dropping, and why, and discuss your ideas about how to turn that around. If it doesn't, we'll have another conversation, and so on. Eventually if none of this works we'll have a different conversation (about why you are leaving). This doesn't actually have anything to do with reviewing daily/weekly reports. Those are for different things.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
matwood 8y ago
Starting from the standpoint that your peers or reports are lying to you is never going to work. Treating people like kids means you'll get kid level responses. If someone is lying, it will eventually come out. That fake report one day will turn into a week and eventually they will get fired. But, don't kill your entire team on the off chance that someone is trying to game the system.
wool_gather 8y ago
Assuming that you really think that the members of your team are lying to you like this, it's easy enough to validate. The first one says they're writing a spec. Well, three days later, where's that spec? Next one is producing some designs, so same. Sure someone saying "$TOOL/$NEW_FUNCTION/$REPLACE_FRAMEWORK just didn't work out", could be cover for "I was playing Pac-man all day", but if you ask for details, BS should become clear pretty quickly. And again, that's starting from the position that you think your teammates are probably slackers who would rather lie than work. Which is not really a great position to hold, IMO.