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The problem is multi-faceted. While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate e

The problem is multi-faceted. While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate employee behavior (even when I normally try and advise against the approach) Some more egregious than others. While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things. Maybe that’s a substitute for them browsing internet all day and just weren’t busy. But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. Much less time is spent on projects of interest (that also benefit the business) during periods of less “fires”. Instead it’s more bare minimum. I know many try to be understanding (myself included) because many have more than just work to deal with but it would need to be addressed if it’s becomes a norm. Maintaining network and IP security is harder in many sectors. Just look at the SW breaches where m365 tenants seem to be vector. Look at the vectors cropping up. Huge rashes of phishing, people loading up corporate email on personal equipment. Rdp dos and the multiple flaws etc. and even if you have the hardware on lock, home networks are a cesspool. Support teams are getting pinged at all sorts of hours because people are shifting work hours to ones more of convenience (again anecdotal) I see more cultures being more amenable to wfh or flex schedules. But I still see the need for brick and mortar work for certain....job types

tjr225 6y ago
Kind of twisted to be upset with people for working less when productivity has increased and wages have stagnated for fifty years.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Most of the difference in value was captured by banks and central banks giving out low interest loans. I think it will revert in the next 15 years though.
TameAntelope 6y ago
Caring about the specific hours an employee is working rather than the quality of their output is something I hope dies along with mandatory physical presence in an office.
- varjag 6y ago
  Quality of work is something people can argue about until they're blue in the face, but hours put are objective.
  - ameister14 6y ago
    Are you honestly suggesting your managers are unable to assess minimum levels of quality in the work of your teams?
  - zabzonk 6y ago
    Objective in the sense that someone sitting at a desk for 8 hours without moving a muscle has sat at a desk for 8 hours. But useful to the company employing them - not so much.
    - varjag 6y ago
      The GP writes: > Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. I think that's rather objective and affects teamwork/project cohesion.
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      > someone sitting at a desk for 8 hours without moving a muscle And this is also what will ruin your health in a few decades. ...which will then reduce your productivity. ...which will then get you fired. ...which will then make you lose your health insurance. ...which will then make you lose your savings to pay for all the healthcare bills. Luckily, none of this will be your employer's problem, because there is another person with healthy enough spine that can replace you at your desk.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
Jestar342 6y ago
Has your team productivity actually dropped? You mention things that are supplemental to productivity but nothing about the actual productivity itself. If not, then I suspect there is no more "time theft"* than usual and you shouldn't get wound up by it. * that is a hideously obnoxious and entitled phrase to use - instead of "distracted" or even simply just "not working".
- lrossi 6y ago
  Right, somehow I missed the time “theft” part. He thinks of his people as if they’re criminals. This is like a textbook example of manager red flags that you should check for and avoid when joining a company.
  - croutonwagon 6y ago
    I wasn’t necessarily talking about my team. In fact mine has remained productive. But it has taken more effort on my part to keep them organized and on task. I’m the opposite of a micromanager, I hate that stuff. But the fact is I’m having to probe more and more as time goes on to keep things moving. Heck it not cuts into my productivity which also cuts into my teams. Heck Just last week I had an admin that it took 45 minutes to get a hold of during an outage mid day because he was trying to renovate a bathroom and had setup a workstation in his garage. Time theft is just a common term and I used it for that reason. And I’ve seen it elsewhere in my workplace and across my communities. We have seen an increase in AV/app whitelisitng reporting attempts to install mouse shakers, auto responses, running video all day to avoid idle timeouts on teams Statius etc. People calling into meeting while out fishing, hunting, shopping doing home improvement etc and usbeing asked to locate them at xyz time. On a personal level idgaf about personal time. I heavily encourage my employees to take it. I heavily encourage mental health awareness and having hobbies and interests outside of work. Heck I regularly take off for such things myself. And I work to give my employees projects that fit their interests and strengths. But what would your prefer I call it when people are trying to do these things and not claiming vacation time?
    - ryandrake 6y ago
ameister14 6y ago
I think remote work will be an option for jobs where it's less about time in the chair and more about what tasks are accomplished. That should honestly be most jobs, and almost all white collar jobs. Time theft is an interesting concept to me because it implies you're being paid for the time rather than for the utility of your labor. Why do you think time theft is important in your job? >But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. Much less time is spent on projects of interest (that also benefit the business) during periods of less “fires”. Instead it’s more bare minimum. I know many try to be understanding (myself included) because many have more than just work to deal with but it would need to be addressed if it’s becomes a norm. Are you saying people are less productive generally? If I noticed the same I'd look into a few things: Are you sure that your KPI's focus on productivity properly? If people are performing at the minimum, are you setting the correct goals?
- canofbars 6y ago
  >Time theft is an interesting concept to me because it implies you're being paid for the time rather than for the utility of your labor. Why do you think time theft is important in your job? It kind of goes both ways though, if you had a less productive day would you be expected to stay late to make up for it? Most of the time you would just leave at the normal time and it wouldn't matter too much as long as you look like you are trying your best.
  - ameister14 6y ago
    >if you had a less productive day would you be expected to stay late to make up for it? Not necessarily, no. If your KPI's and bonus are properly lined up, that could be something for your manager to keep an eye on but you can't expect every day to be peak productivity.
    - canofbars 6y ago
      So on the same logic, if you had a more productive day you shouldn't expect to leave early. I'd say its fair to say your results are more important than time but it goes both ways.
charlesu 6y ago
> While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. Are these employees paid hourly? If not, it’s not really time theft if the work gets done on time.
- varjag 6y ago
  Not sure where you live, but in most places in the world the workweek is regulated.
- croutonwagon 6y ago
  In many cases yes. I do have hourly employees that are paid for specific support time slots. Part of their job is to be available and responsive during certain hours. And that’s my point. It’s not getting done on time. Projects that are well planned and have long histories of identical executions are taking longer and simply being dropped if I’m not probing.
news_to_me 6y ago
> But I still see the need for brick and mortar work for certain....job types Maybe you wanted to say "certain people"? Working from home is definitely more difficult for some people's work style than others, plus a ton of other factors like how well one's home is suited to working in, how much skill a person has working in that environment, etc. Time theft is a bummer, especially on the team-level where you just want to get things done. I wonder what causes it? Off the top of my head I can think of: - People are naturally lazy (I really disagree with this, but it feels like the default "robber baron" answer) - People are having trouble adjusting to different and various work environments (probably a good amount of this) - The nature of how we work in America is fundamentally unnatural for many people, and the lack of supervision allows people to assume a better work/life balance #3 is maybe just my experience in the workplace, but it feels pretty true — I wonder how widespread that experience is. In any case, I'm glad the pandemic forced many people to reevaluate what "going to work" looks like, and hopefully we settle on something closer to how we'd each like to work.
- ameister14 6y ago
  >Time theft is a bummer, especially on the team-level where you just want to get things done. I've dealt with this in execs and team leaders before - why do you care about time theft? If it's about the productivity loss, that should be measurable in its own right. Most of the time, I find that people just want to be able to see the team working for them and don't like the idea of paying people 'not to work' despite the fact that what they're really paying for are outputs.
  - news_to_me 6y ago
    Totally agree — I was trying to frame my comment in the terms of the GP. For better or worse, managers are often forced to think in terms of time rather than output, and I wanted to respond on that level. For jobs where time spent correlates with output, time is a good way to think about it (and should be paid hourly), but obviously this isn't 99% of white collar jobs.
uncledave 6y ago
Time theft is about the most dystopian concept I have ever heard. A huge chunk of my time (40% approx) is consumed by pointless cargo cult corporate activities which have no direct correlation on revenue, reputation or longevity but merely serve to sustain positions or activities in the company which someone felt needed to exist otherwise it wouldn’t be a real company. This is a universal truth for all companies with more than about 50 employees I’ve worked for. Who’s the time thief? There’s only one and it’s efficiency or lack thereof. At best I’m good for 4 hours a day, probably in separate 1 hour long bursts with downtime between them. No mandated attendance, hours, management technique, motivational theory is going to improve that. Pay me for what I can do not when I can do it.
- ameister14 6y ago
  >A huge chunk of my time (40% approx) is consumed by pointless cargo cult corporate activities which have no direct correlation on revenue, reputation or longevity but merely serve to sustain positions or activities in the company which someone felt needed to exist otherwise it wouldn’t be a real company. This is a universal truth for all companies with more than about 50 employees I’ve worked for. I've found it isn't so much the cargo cult stuff that causes inefficiency as it is administrative hiring and artificially increased complexity.
pram 6y ago
Time theft? Is that part of the Time theory of value?
turtlebits 6y ago
Has work output decreased? Have you properly communicated expected response times and set an interval for requiring updates? If not, that seems like a mistake in management.
lrossi 6y ago
> While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things Oh, the horror! > people are shifting work hours to ones more of convenience (again anecdotal) They have no shame! > But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. This all sounds very familiar. Let me give you another perspective on this. It’s very stressful and disruptive to be pinged 20+ times a day. While some of those are people asking for my help, which I gladly do, a good chunk are managers and seniors asking for “updates” or checking in just to see “how it’s going”. Like we didn’t have a standup 4 hours ago. Sometimes it’s colleagues asked by the manager to check on others, so that it doesn’t look like they’re too annoying. I know because it’s obvious and I got asked to do the same many times. The answer is that it’s going great, thank you very much. At least it was until you interrupted me for the nth time today and now I will have to waste time trying to remember what the hell I was doing in that debugging session. Actually no, a timer expired, so now I will have to restart the whole thing from scratch. So yes, I sometimes stop answering the chat, or close it altogether. Because I want us to hit the deadline and ship on time, since I care about the team’s results instead of seeing how busy my subordinates are and feeling important for nagging people all day long. A micromanager hurts the company by reducing productivity and team morale. Your subordinates are not “doing leisurely things” during working hours. They are probably brushing up their CV and doing leetcode to find another job.
- j4yav 6y ago
  Hey, I'm working on an app meant to help with this (well, it won't fix the instincts of bad managers, but it does provide an "at your convenience" place for topics that might have otherwise been a meeting or a shoulder tap. I'd be curious what you think about it. If you're up to share your thoughts there's a link and my email in my profile.
  - lrossi 6y ago
    This is laudable, since I think recent apps like slack or teams are partially responsible for the increase in disruption. Older ways of messaging, like IRC, were not focused so much on notifications and having a full message history that you had to go through when signing in. This forced people to use specialized forms of communication (video meetings, emails, wikis) for important information. Chat was used for casual stuff, for which it works well.
throwaway45349 6y ago
You call it time theft, I call it work life balance. If I'm struggling with a problem, sitting on my ass for 5 hours is not going to make the solution come quicker. Going for a walk, playing video games, or calling somebody are a great way to recharge, and as long as I'm not blocking anybody or producing worse output, it's a net plus over time for productivity. In return, I'm happy to throw in a few extra hours in the evening or over the weekend if I suddenly have a breakthrough, but I'm doing that on my terms. The team cohesion part can be a real issue, but defaulting to asynchronous communication can really help here.
TecoAndJix 6y ago
Network security in a WFH environment is not an issue when your infrastructure + identity & access are designed correctly.
Danieru 6y ago
Thank you for sharing. I find it incredible how so far all responces to your post are in-denial. Being productive while remote is hard work and requires a high level of self-awareness and self-control. We cannot "will it into existence" by denying the negative experiences of employers. Time theft is a real concept businesses care about. Business think they are buying time, with an eye to capture the results. If any one reads this gets confused or angry about this: go contractor. If you want to be selling results not your time then you best move into a working relationship where you sell results. Salary is a time-selling relationship. As a remote contractor, with my own remote employee, I can say I expect the time logged to be productive time. I don't care if my employee stops work mid day to paint his house: but he better log that time. Flexibility is a responsibility, if people continue to abuse work from home you can bet companies across the world are going to return to office at the fastest opportunity.
- j4yav 6y ago
  I think the idea that businesses are buying your time (particularly in a salary context) and hoping they see results by maximizing your hours sitting in your chair is changing, and that's where the disagreement is coming from. It's not so much that they are in denial of reality but that the view of employees as time thieves or that there is just no way to understand if salaried employees produce results is already becoming a bit old fashioned.
- deleted 6y ago
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Beached 6y ago
my experience is that there is FAAAAR more time theft in the office. coffee, extended breaks, walks, catching up, meetings running long to shoot the shit, " oh hey, did you see this happen last week", those quick "what do you think about... that turns into 30m convos. I clocked over 2 hours of wasted time every day for the average person for the 4 teams I am able to observe from where I sit. all expectations were met, and on time and on quality with this 20% time wasting. wfh has freed up 1.5 to 2h a day for me because people don't walk up to my desk a literal 6 times a day to go get coffee or see what's up. also the volume of "can I run something past you" had plummeted to only 10% of what it use to be. that use to happen once or twice daily, and now happens like once a week. if people don't see me sitting there, they don't ask me how to do their job. it's amazing. not to mention I can now walk on a treadmill while at my desk, save time commuting, save money on dry-cleaning and gas, and I can be productive with my life during all those meetings you are forced to attend but don't involve you in any way. wireless headsets with the camera off is great. I can talk when needed, mute myself for 50 of the 60 minutes, and do a mindless task like vacuum, dust, dishes, fold laundry, etc, while listening to people debate pointless shit.
johnrgrace 6y ago
How is taking more time to respond slacking?
ashtonkem 6y ago
It’s estimated that your average worker is only putting in 3.5hrs of work a day. It’s unclear whether or not “time theft” (a term I despise) is worse in remote jobs, or if managers are responding to the inability of workers to fake being busy.
deleted 6y ago
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j4yav 6y ago
There is a way to look at the slacking part more simply, I think - if you have an employee that you sincerely have no way to tell if they are producing anything or not, and neither can anyone else at your company, then why do you have them? What was the job description meant to have been when you hired them and how did you end up here? A solution for this could be managing to outcomes, and setting more clear expectations around their role.
flatline 6y ago
One of the points that I think is underlying your post is that this is not normal remote working conditions. People are stuck at home, with kids, spouses, etc., and all other social outlets shut off. Or they are completely alone and isolated. On the flip side an all-remote team keeps the in-office people from having the advantage of hallways conversations and other low-friction means of communication that end up excluding remote employees. It’s often difficult to gauge employee productivity. I do think that as managers we kid ourselves that we can actually improve individual productivity in any significant, sustainable way, other than helping people remove roadblocks like, you know, the kids screaming in the background while you are trying to code.
toomanybeersies 6y ago
> But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc. That seems entirely reasonable to me. If I've been asked something by a coworker and for whatever reason I believe that they're AFK/offline, then responding to their message/email is going to be a lower priority for me. I'm not going to stop whatever I'm in the middle of doing to give an immediate response if whoever asked me isn't going to read it immediately. I'll finish what I'm working on, or reply when I'm taking a break.
deleted 6y ago
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peheje 6y ago
> But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc. Make expectations on response times clear. I'm guessing you want it to depend on the medium used and not depend on your (appeared?) online status. Talk with your team about it. Bonus points for summary e-mail after talk. You usually got a reponse in minutes (I assume IM or mail), lucky. That is changing: you think it's because they slack. Maybe they much more often enter flow-state* while WFH which is so easely interrupted (or rarely gained) at the office. I know I do. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
frays 6y ago
How are you currently tracking against your KPIs/targets? Have they also dropped as well?

tjr225 6y ago

Kind of twisted to be upset with people for working less when productivity has increased and wages have stagnated for fifty years.

xiphias2 6y ago
Most of the difference in value was captured by banks and central banks giving out low interest loans. I think it will revert in the next 15 years though.

TameAntelope 6y ago

Caring about the specific hours an employee is working rather than the quality of their output is something I hope dies along with mandatory physical presence in an office.

varjag 6y ago
Quality of work is something people can argue about until they're blue in the face, but hours put are objective.
- ameister14 6y ago
  Are you honestly suggesting your managers are unable to assess minimum levels of quality in the work of your teams?
- zabzonk 6y ago
  Objective in the sense that someone sitting at a desk for 8 hours without moving a muscle has sat at a desk for 8 hours. But useful to the company employing them - not so much.
  - varjag 6y ago
    The GP writes: > Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. I think that's rather objective and affects teamwork/project cohesion.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    > someone sitting at a desk for 8 hours without moving a muscle And this is also what will ruin your health in a few decades. ...which will then reduce your productivity. ...which will then get you fired. ...which will then make you lose your health insurance. ...which will then make you lose your savings to pay for all the healthcare bills. Luckily, none of this will be your employer's problem, because there is another person with healthy enough spine that can replace you at your desk.
- pdimitar 6y ago

Jestar342 6y ago

Has your team productivity actually dropped? You mention things that are supplemental to productivity but nothing about the actual productivity itself. If not, then I suspect there is no more "time theft"* than usual and you shouldn't get wound up by it. * that is a hideously obnoxious and entitled phrase to use - instead of "distracted" or even simply just "not working".

lrossi 6y ago
Right, somehow I missed the time “theft” part. He thinks of his people as if they’re criminals. This is like a textbook example of manager red flags that you should check for and avoid when joining a company.
- croutonwagon 6y ago
  I wasn’t necessarily talking about my team. In fact mine has remained productive. But it has taken more effort on my part to keep them organized and on task. I’m the opposite of a micromanager, I hate that stuff. But the fact is I’m having to probe more and more as time goes on to keep things moving. Heck it not cuts into my productivity which also cuts into my teams. Heck Just last week I had an admin that it took 45 minutes to get a hold of during an outage mid day because he was trying to renovate a bathroom and had setup a workstation in his garage. Time theft is just a common term and I used it for that reason. And I’ve seen it elsewhere in my workplace and across my communities. We have seen an increase in AV/app whitelisitng reporting attempts to install mouse shakers, auto responses, running video all day to avoid idle timeouts on teams Statius etc. People calling into meeting while out fishing, hunting, shopping doing home improvement etc and usbeing asked to locate them at xyz time. On a personal level idgaf about personal time. I heavily encourage my employees to take it. I heavily encourage mental health awareness and having hobbies and interests outside of work. Heck I regularly take off for such things myself. And I work to give my employees projects that fit their interests and strengths. But what would your prefer I call it when people are trying to do these things and not claiming vacation time?
  - ryandrake 6y ago

ameister14 6y ago

I think remote work will be an option for jobs where it's less about time in the chair and more about what tasks are accomplished. That should honestly be most jobs, and almost all white collar jobs. Time theft is an interesting concept to me because it implies you're being paid for the time rather than for the utility of your labor. Why do you think time theft is important in your job? >But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. Much less time is spent on projects of interest (that also benefit the business) during periods of less “fires”. Instead it’s more bare minimum. I know many try to be understanding (myself included) because many have more than just work to deal with but it would need to be addressed if it’s becomes a norm. Are you saying people are less productive generally? If I noticed the same I'd look into a few things: Are you sure that your KPI's focus on productivity properly? If people are performing at the minimum, are you setting the correct goals?

canofbars 6y ago
>Time theft is an interesting concept to me because it implies you're being paid for the time rather than for the utility of your labor. Why do you think time theft is important in your job? It kind of goes both ways though, if you had a less productive day would you be expected to stay late to make up for it? Most of the time you would just leave at the normal time and it wouldn't matter too much as long as you look like you are trying your best.
- ameister14 6y ago
  >if you had a less productive day would you be expected to stay late to make up for it? Not necessarily, no. If your KPI's and bonus are properly lined up, that could be something for your manager to keep an eye on but you can't expect every day to be peak productivity.
  - canofbars 6y ago
    So on the same logic, if you had a more productive day you shouldn't expect to leave early. I'd say its fair to say your results are more important than time but it goes both ways.

charlesu 6y ago

> While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. Are these employees paid hourly? If not, it’s not really time theft if the work gets done on time.

varjag 6y ago
Not sure where you live, but in most places in the world the workweek is regulated.
croutonwagon 6y ago
In many cases yes. I do have hourly employees that are paid for specific support time slots. Part of their job is to be available and responsive during certain hours. And that’s my point. It’s not getting done on time. Projects that are well planned and have long histories of identical executions are taking longer and simply being dropped if I’m not probing.

news_to_me 6y ago

> But I still see the need for brick and mortar work for certain....job types Maybe you wanted to say "certain people"? Working from home is definitely more difficult for some people's work style than others, plus a ton of other factors like how well one's home is suited to working in, how much skill a person has working in that environment, etc. Time theft is a bummer, especially on the team-level where you just want to get things done. I wonder what causes it? Off the top of my head I can think of: - People are naturally lazy (I really disagree with this, but it feels like the default "robber baron" answer) - People are having trouble adjusting to different and various work environments (probably a good amount of this) - The nature of how we work in America is fundamentally unnatural for many people, and the lack of supervision allows people to assume a better work/life balance #3 is maybe just my experience in the workplace, but it feels pretty true — I wonder how widespread that experience is. In any case, I'm glad the pandemic forced many people to reevaluate what "going to work" looks like, and hopefully we settle on something closer to how we'd each like to work.

ameister14 6y ago
>Time theft is a bummer, especially on the team-level where you just want to get things done. I've dealt with this in execs and team leaders before - why do you care about time theft? If it's about the productivity loss, that should be measurable in its own right. Most of the time, I find that people just want to be able to see the team working for them and don't like the idea of paying people 'not to work' despite the fact that what they're really paying for are outputs.
- news_to_me 6y ago
  Totally agree — I was trying to frame my comment in the terms of the GP. For better or worse, managers are often forced to think in terms of time rather than output, and I wanted to respond on that level. For jobs where time spent correlates with output, time is a good way to think about it (and should be paid hourly), but obviously this isn't 99% of white collar jobs.

uncledave 6y ago

Time theft is about the most dystopian concept I have ever heard. A huge chunk of my time (40% approx) is consumed by pointless cargo cult corporate activities which have no direct correlation on revenue, reputation or longevity but merely serve to sustain positions or activities in the company which someone felt needed to exist otherwise it wouldn’t be a real company. This is a universal truth for all companies with more than about 50 employees I’ve worked for. Who’s the time thief? There’s only one and it’s efficiency or lack thereof. At best I’m good for 4 hours a day, probably in separate 1 hour long bursts with downtime between them. No mandated attendance, hours, management technique, motivational theory is going to improve that. Pay me for what I can do not when I can do it.

ameister14 6y ago
>A huge chunk of my time (40% approx) is consumed by pointless cargo cult corporate activities which have no direct correlation on revenue, reputation or longevity but merely serve to sustain positions or activities in the company which someone felt needed to exist otherwise it wouldn’t be a real company. This is a universal truth for all companies with more than about 50 employees I’ve worked for. I've found it isn't so much the cargo cult stuff that causes inefficiency as it is administrative hiring and artificially increased complexity.

pram 6y ago

Time theft? Is that part of the Time theory of value?

turtlebits 6y ago

Has work output decreased? Have you properly communicated expected response times and set an interval for requiring updates? If not, that seems like a mistake in management.

lrossi 6y ago

> While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things Oh, the horror! > people are shifting work hours to ones more of convenience (again anecdotal) They have no shame! > But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. This all sounds very familiar. Let me give you another perspective on this. It’s very stressful and disruptive to be pinged 20+ times a day. While some of those are people asking for my help, which I gladly do, a good chunk are managers and seniors asking for “updates” or checking in just to see “how it’s going”. Like we didn’t have a standup 4 hours ago. Sometimes it’s colleagues asked by the manager to check on others, so that it doesn’t look like they’re too annoying. I know because it’s obvious and I got asked to do the same many times. The answer is that it’s going great, thank you very much. At least it was until you interrupted me for the nth time today and now I will have to waste time trying to remember what the hell I was doing in that debugging session. Actually no, a timer expired, so now I will have to restart the whole thing from scratch. So yes, I sometimes stop answering the chat, or close it altogether. Because I want us to hit the deadline and ship on time, since I care about the team’s results instead of seeing how busy my subordinates are and feeling important for nagging people all day long. A micromanager hurts the company by reducing productivity and team morale. Your subordinates are not “doing leisurely things” during working hours. They are probably brushing up their CV and doing leetcode to find another job.

j4yav 6y ago
Hey, I'm working on an app meant to help with this (well, it won't fix the instincts of bad managers, but it does provide an "at your convenience" place for topics that might have otherwise been a meeting or a shoulder tap. I'd be curious what you think about it. If you're up to share your thoughts there's a link and my email in my profile.
- lrossi 6y ago
  This is laudable, since I think recent apps like slack or teams are partially responsible for the increase in disruption. Older ways of messaging, like IRC, were not focused so much on notifications and having a full message history that you had to go through when signing in. This forced people to use specialized forms of communication (video meetings, emails, wikis) for important information. Chat was used for casual stuff, for which it works well.

throwaway45349 6y ago

You call it time theft, I call it work life balance. If I'm struggling with a problem, sitting on my ass for 5 hours is not going to make the solution come quicker. Going for a walk, playing video games, or calling somebody are a great way to recharge, and as long as I'm not blocking anybody or producing worse output, it's a net plus over time for productivity. In return, I'm happy to throw in a few extra hours in the evening or over the weekend if I suddenly have a breakthrough, but I'm doing that on my terms. The team cohesion part can be a real issue, but defaulting to asynchronous communication can really help here.

TecoAndJix 6y ago

Network security in a WFH environment is not an issue when your infrastructure + identity & access are designed correctly.

Danieru 6y ago

Thank you for sharing. I find it incredible how so far all responces to your post are in-denial. Being productive while remote is hard work and requires a high level of self-awareness and self-control. We cannot "will it into existence" by denying the negative experiences of employers. Time theft is a real concept businesses care about. Business think they are buying time, with an eye to capture the results. If any one reads this gets confused or angry about this: go contractor. If you want to be selling results not your time then you best move into a working relationship where you sell results. Salary is a time-selling relationship. As a remote contractor, with my own remote employee, I can say I expect the time logged to be productive time. I don't care if my employee stops work mid day to paint his house: but he better log that time. Flexibility is a responsibility, if people continue to abuse work from home you can bet companies across the world are going to return to office at the fastest opportunity.

j4yav 6y ago
I think the idea that businesses are buying your time (particularly in a salary context) and hoping they see results by maximizing your hours sitting in your chair is changing, and that's where the disagreement is coming from. It's not so much that they are in denial of reality but that the view of employees as time thieves or that there is just no way to understand if salaried employees produce results is already becoming a bit old fashioned.
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Beached 6y ago

my experience is that there is FAAAAR more time theft in the office. coffee, extended breaks, walks, catching up, meetings running long to shoot the shit, " oh hey, did you see this happen last week", those quick "what do you think about... that turns into 30m convos. I clocked over 2 hours of wasted time every day for the average person for the 4 teams I am able to observe from where I sit. all expectations were met, and on time and on quality with this 20% time wasting. wfh has freed up 1.5 to 2h a day for me because people don't walk up to my desk a literal 6 times a day to go get coffee or see what's up. also the volume of "can I run something past you" had plummeted to only 10% of what it use to be. that use to happen once or twice daily, and now happens like once a week. if people don't see me sitting there, they don't ask me how to do their job. it's amazing. not to mention I can now walk on a treadmill while at my desk, save time commuting, save money on dry-cleaning and gas, and I can be productive with my life during all those meetings you are forced to attend but don't involve you in any way. wireless headsets with the camera off is great. I can talk when needed, mute myself for 50 of the 60 minutes, and do a mindless task like vacuum, dust, dishes, fold laundry, etc, while listening to people debate pointless shit.

johnrgrace 6y ago

How is taking more time to respond slacking?

ashtonkem 6y ago

It’s estimated that your average worker is only putting in 3.5hrs of work a day. It’s unclear whether or not “time theft” (a term I despise) is worse in remote jobs, or if managers are responding to the inability of workers to fake being busy.

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j4yav 6y ago

There is a way to look at the slacking part more simply, I think - if you have an employee that you sincerely have no way to tell if they are producing anything or not, and neither can anyone else at your company, then why do you have them? What was the job description meant to have been when you hired them and how did you end up here? A solution for this could be managing to outcomes, and setting more clear expectations around their role.

flatline 6y ago

One of the points that I think is underlying your post is that this is not normal remote working conditions. People are stuck at home, with kids, spouses, etc., and all other social outlets shut off. Or they are completely alone and isolated. On the flip side an all-remote team keeps the in-office people from having the advantage of hallways conversations and other low-friction means of communication that end up excluding remote employees. It’s often difficult to gauge employee productivity. I do think that as managers we kid ourselves that we can actually improve individual productivity in any significant, sustainable way, other than helping people remove roadblocks like, you know, the kids screaming in the background while you are trying to code.

toomanybeersies 6y ago

> But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc. That seems entirely reasonable to me. If I've been asked something by a coworker and for whatever reason I believe that they're AFK/offline, then responding to their message/email is going to be a lower priority for me. I'm not going to stop whatever I'm in the middle of doing to give an immediate response if whoever asked me isn't going to read it immediately. I'll finish what I'm working on, or reply when I'm taking a break.

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peheje 6y ago

> But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc. Make expectations on response times clear. I'm guessing you want it to depend on the medium used and not depend on your (appeared?) online status. Talk with your team about it. Bonus points for summary e-mail after talk. You usually got a reponse in minutes (I assume IM or mail), lucky. That is changing: you think it's because they slack. Maybe they much more often enter flow-state* while WFH which is so easely interrupted (or rarely gained) at the office. I know I do. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

frays 6y ago

How are you currently tracking against your KPIs/targets? Have they also dropped as well?