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Because managers also have managers. If the managers at the highest level think developing software is pretty similar to packing widgets in a factory, they unde

Because managers also have managers. If the managers at the highest level think developing software is pretty similar to packing widgets in a factory, they understand and want to see the Frederick Windsor Taylor school of management in the engineering department. For the first couple of years, you fight against this, passionately arguing for genuinely good engineering practices. But every time there’s a problem, you compromise and it creeps a bit more in the direction of ‘command and control’. And all those little changes add up to the results you observe.

dmix 7y ago
This is why I'll never work for anything but smaller startups. That sound awful and counter to how software should be done. I'd imagine the smart developers quickly get replaced by the obedient clock-punchers.
- repomies691 7y ago
  > I'd imagine the smart developers quickly get replaced by the obedient clock-punchers. I have never understood why the clock-punching is so a big problem. It doesn't take much time to track your time spent with typical softare, in my experience. And apparently being clock-puncher now makes you dumb as well? I have personally also tracked time on my personal projects. While not sure if it does bring much value, it is not a huge investment time-wise.
  - carlmr 7y ago
    I think that's not the point OP is trying to make. There's nothing wrong with tracking time for yourself, or clocking in and out of work. Time however is a really really bad measure of productivity. If somebody constantly stays late at work because they never finish stuff on time, in our current culture they often get promoted for being hard workers. While some might do the same job in 2h that they do in a month. So what the super productive guy learns after a while is that they just need to "work overtime" and delay presenting results to get ahead. If this attitude starts pervading your team the productivity might start tanking too.
    - repomies691 7y ago
      > Time however is a really really bad measure of productivity. Situationally. With programming there are loads of different tasks. For some tasks I think time can be quite a good metric. Still, metrics matter and I think having lousy metrics is better than not having metrics at all. Of course you have to realize what purpose the metric has in certain situation.
      - CogitoCogito 7y ago
        > I think having lousy metrics is better than not having metrics at all. I fundamentally disagree. Metrics don't live in their own world. They affect the world around them and incentivize certain actions. Bad metrics can produce bad incentives. There are certainly many cases where simply not knowing something is better than knowing something that's only partially right. However, that requires a level of humility and acceptance of one's limitations that can be hard to defend to others looking for straight answers to all questions.
        repomies691 7y ago
        Well, very situational question. My question here is mostly, what are the bad incentives caused when people time track their days for example in with 1 hour or 0,5 hour granularity with software development tasks? I have been doing that kind of tracking both professionally and in personal projects, and I don't see the harm caused.
        CogitoCogito 7y ago
        Fair enough. I mean I guess I wouldn't go so far as to claim that time-tracking is an obviously bad metric. However, I would definitely claim it can be poorly utilized. This metric is just a tool. Employed effectively it can increase performance. Employed ineffectively it can increase...time. But generally I think my main point stands. We need to be humble enough to sometimes accept lack of control (i.e. not using certain metrics/processes) rather than deluding ourselves by through certain metrics that really aren't very good.
  - jddj 7y ago
    Tracking time spent on various tasks can be useful (if not required, eg. for claiming R&D grants). But I feel like tracking time in office/time at desk is a different beast. Happy employees, at a certain level of knowledge work, have a degree of autonomy. Unhappy employees who could otherwise be happy employees are a waste of potential and money. Having a clock on/clock off and a 9-5 butts-in-seats management style and incentive structure reduces perceived autonomy.
  - JSavageReal 7y ago
    You like being micromanaged and told what time you need to be in and out of the office everyday?
  - bitcurious 7y ago
    >I have never understood why the clock-punching is so a big problem. It doesn't take much time to track your time spent with typical softare, in my experience. And apparently being clock-puncher now makes you dumb as well? I don't agree with using it as a slur, but I do think it's an awful way to work in a creative field. Some of my most productive work happens as a direct result of my taking breaks - a walk here, a cup of tea there. All the while I'm thinking about the problem at hand. Time tracking discourages this of lateral approach in favor of brute forcing your way to the answer.
repomies691 7y ago
> For the first couple of years, you fight against this, passionately arguing for genuinely good engineering practices. I would like to understand why on earth time tracking is against "genuinely good engineering practices".
- Findeton 7y ago
  Would you do time tracking for someone writing a script for a movie? Or for a painter? Writing code not only requires skill, it's a creative process. You not only need to think about what you write, but also need to stop and relax. When your mind is tired, you're going to write shitty code. It's better to go home earlier and write good code tomorrow than write bad code that in the best case you'll have to delete and start from scratch tomorrow. Worst case scenario, everyone writes bad code, unnecessarily increasing complexity, making the code prone to failures and requiring more rewrites, more developers and more time to understand it.
  - repomies691 7y ago
    I don't follow how that is related to time tracking. I have used time tracking for personal projects and also professionally and I genuinely think that it can add value to my workflow, in a way that I can analyze how much I spend on certain tasks etc. I would guess also painters and script writers track quite often track their time. I think some level of time tracking is good for almost any level of work. For example, if your goal is to produce paintings and sell them for living, you probably want to know how long does it take for you to produce something so you can see if you are approaching sustainability. Similarly if you write movie or tv scripts it is probably relevant whether it takes 2 months to write the script or 2 years. Some work is just structurally different so different approaches to time tracking make sense.
    - BigJono 7y ago
      You're talking about two completely different levels of granularity. It's fine to discuss "what did we accomplish this month" and try to quantify it. It's not fine to ask a script writer why they didn't write any lines between 8:30 and 9:00 this morning.

dmix 7y ago

This is why I'll never work for anything but smaller startups. That sound awful and counter to how software should be done. I'd imagine the smart developers quickly get replaced by the obedient clock-punchers.

repomies691 7y ago
> I'd imagine the smart developers quickly get replaced by the obedient clock-punchers. I have never understood why the clock-punching is so a big problem. It doesn't take much time to track your time spent with typical softare, in my experience. And apparently being clock-puncher now makes you dumb as well? I have personally also tracked time on my personal projects. While not sure if it does bring much value, it is not a huge investment time-wise.
- carlmr 7y ago
  I think that's not the point OP is trying to make. There's nothing wrong with tracking time for yourself, or clocking in and out of work. Time however is a really really bad measure of productivity. If somebody constantly stays late at work because they never finish stuff on time, in our current culture they often get promoted for being hard workers. While some might do the same job in 2h that they do in a month. So what the super productive guy learns after a while is that they just need to "work overtime" and delay presenting results to get ahead. If this attitude starts pervading your team the productivity might start tanking too.
  - repomies691 7y ago
    > Time however is a really really bad measure of productivity. Situationally. With programming there are loads of different tasks. For some tasks I think time can be quite a good metric. Still, metrics matter and I think having lousy metrics is better than not having metrics at all. Of course you have to realize what purpose the metric has in certain situation.
    - CogitoCogito 7y ago
      > I think having lousy metrics is better than not having metrics at all. I fundamentally disagree. Metrics don't live in their own world. They affect the world around them and incentivize certain actions. Bad metrics can produce bad incentives. There are certainly many cases where simply not knowing something is better than knowing something that's only partially right. However, that requires a level of humility and acceptance of one's limitations that can be hard to defend to others looking for straight answers to all questions.
      - repomies691 7y ago
        Well, very situational question. My question here is mostly, what are the bad incentives caused when people time track their days for example in with 1 hour or 0,5 hour granularity with software development tasks? I have been doing that kind of tracking both professionally and in personal projects, and I don't see the harm caused.
        CogitoCogito 7y ago
        Fair enough. I mean I guess I wouldn't go so far as to claim that time-tracking is an obviously bad metric. However, I would definitely claim it can be poorly utilized. This metric is just a tool. Employed effectively it can increase performance. Employed ineffectively it can increase...time. But generally I think my main point stands. We need to be humble enough to sometimes accept lack of control (i.e. not using certain metrics/processes) rather than deluding ourselves by through certain metrics that really aren't very good.
- jddj 7y ago
  Tracking time spent on various tasks can be useful (if not required, eg. for claiming R&D grants). But I feel like tracking time in office/time at desk is a different beast. Happy employees, at a certain level of knowledge work, have a degree of autonomy. Unhappy employees who could otherwise be happy employees are a waste of potential and money. Having a clock on/clock off and a 9-5 butts-in-seats management style and incentive structure reduces perceived autonomy.
- JSavageReal 7y ago
  You like being micromanaged and told what time you need to be in and out of the office everyday?
- bitcurious 7y ago
  >I have never understood why the clock-punching is so a big problem. It doesn't take much time to track your time spent with typical softare, in my experience. And apparently being clock-puncher now makes you dumb as well? I don't agree with using it as a slur, but I do think it's an awful way to work in a creative field. Some of my most productive work happens as a direct result of my taking breaks - a walk here, a cup of tea there. All the while I'm thinking about the problem at hand. Time tracking discourages this of lateral approach in favor of brute forcing your way to the answer.

repomies691 7y ago

> For the first couple of years, you fight against this, passionately arguing for genuinely good engineering practices. I would like to understand why on earth time tracking is against "genuinely good engineering practices".

Findeton 7y ago
Would you do time tracking for someone writing a script for a movie? Or for a painter? Writing code not only requires skill, it's a creative process. You not only need to think about what you write, but also need to stop and relax. When your mind is tired, you're going to write shitty code. It's better to go home earlier and write good code tomorrow than write bad code that in the best case you'll have to delete and start from scratch tomorrow. Worst case scenario, everyone writes bad code, unnecessarily increasing complexity, making the code prone to failures and requiring more rewrites, more developers and more time to understand it.
- repomies691 7y ago
  I don't follow how that is related to time tracking. I have used time tracking for personal projects and also professionally and I genuinely think that it can add value to my workflow, in a way that I can analyze how much I spend on certain tasks etc. I would guess also painters and script writers track quite often track their time. I think some level of time tracking is good for almost any level of work. For example, if your goal is to produce paintings and sell them for living, you probably want to know how long does it take for you to produce something so you can see if you are approaching sustainability. Similarly if you write movie or tv scripts it is probably relevant whether it takes 2 months to write the script or 2 years. Some work is just structurally different so different approaches to time tracking make sense.
  - BigJono 7y ago
    You're talking about two completely different levels of granularity. It's fine to discuss "what did we accomplish this month" and try to quantify it. It's not fine to ask a script writer why they didn't write any lines between 8:30 and 9:00 this morning.