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Are you talking about the laptop monitoring? I find employers who watch the clock or other "activity" as a measurement of your output to be far worse. Focus on

Are you talking about the laptop monitoring? I find employers who watch the clock or other "activity" as a measurement of your output to be far worse. Focus on the results. Set the timelines and goals, and let the employee work however they want. If they deliver as agreed upon then what's the issue?

vertis 5y ago
No, I'm talking specifically about the first example in the article in which they describe a person that is deliberately shirking. I'm not interested in the technical solutions to this, they're abhorrent also. With regard to results, timelines and goals all of those are incredibly hard to measure accurately in a product delivery context. If the persons contract says "will deliver X by Y date" then by all means work the hours required and no more. What this persons contract actually says is "Will work 8hrs a day, 5 days a week, on whatever tasks are assigned. Will be paid $$$". 'Gavin' is not doing this, and he's not even just being a bit flexible. He's actively pretending to work when he's not -- that's fraud / contract violation.
- manigandham 5y ago
  Sure, that's understandable. My perspective is that those agreements should be changed from "X hours per week" to just "accomplish tasks by their deadlines". If no tasks are assigned then how does blocking those hours benefit anyone? And if tasks are assigned, then what does it matter beyond the deadline being met?
  - vertis 5y ago
    Okay, I want the whole project by the end of the day. /s It just doesn't work. Complexity of tasks, scope, resources all make for something that is very hard to measure. I agree with your sentiment, but it's hard to execute. However, the high-functioning teams I've been part of are certainly not checking if you're sitting in your seat at 9/5. They're not even worried if you take a long lunch, because they know that you can't cram every second of the day with programming work, but doing so 'in secret' is not okay.
    - manigandham 5y ago
      I agree with you on the "in secret" part, but where we differ is that I see that as a symptom of micromanagement by the company. It's not isolated to remote work either, there are plenty of people just sitting on social media at work until it's time to leave, and usually being overall less productive because of these forced hours. Whether there's trust (on both sides) to effectively make progress is an entirely different issue. Remote work just makes it more explicit.
  - hermitcrab 5y ago
    Software engineering is a process of design/discovery. So it is often very hard to say how long something is going to take. For example a 'simple' change could unearth a bug in a third party library that ends up taking days to work around.
    - manigandham 5y ago
      I know. So what? People weren't actually productive for 40 hours in the office either, it was still based on timelines. Nothing has really changed here, other than trust actually being tested to a much larger degree. And perhaps people on both sides are finding out just how much trust there is.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Gavin' is not doing this, and he's not even just being a bit flexible. He's actively pretending to work when he's not -- that's fraud / contract violation. The fact that Guardian used this example simply causes them to lose credibility. Any half wit can see that Gavin’s case is not one of people opting to choose work where they have more time rather than money. This is yet another clear example of people trying to sell ads by creating “engagement” via content that causes outrage, even though it is nonsensical. I cannot solely blame the lack of journalists’ integrity, as I cannot imagine dealing with the challenges of a business model that got nuked in the span of 10 to 20 years.
  - vertis 5y ago
    The rest of the article does go on to talk about more reasonable examples of people deciding not to go back to jobs, but I agree the Author would have been better served without 'Gavin' (from a credibility perspective).
bobthechef 5y ago
> Set the timelines and goals, and let the employee work however they want. If they deliver as agreed upon then what's the issue? Ah, but timelines can be influenced by how quickly something can be delivered. Scrum does this and encourages this as well. How many tickets are allocated to a sprint is dependent on the team velocity. If an employer sees that you can do more in time interval X, then he’ll put more on your plate. Many employers abhor a time vacuum and will fill it to squeeze out the most value. So one defense is to take your time. The more you bust your ass, the more you have on your plate. Another is to place strict limits on the time at work. Bust your ass all you want, but check out at time X every day.
- manigandham 5y ago
  I agree, and it's a much larger topic on time and expectation management. My point though is that many people are both overworked and have no work boundaries, which is the worst of both. Taking control back so that work serves their life instead of the other way around is much needed and good to see.

vertis 5y ago

No, I'm talking specifically about the first example in the article in which they describe a person that is deliberately shirking. I'm not interested in the technical solutions to this, they're abhorrent also. With regard to results, timelines and goals all of those are incredibly hard to measure accurately in a product delivery context. If the persons contract says "will deliver X by Y date" then by all means work the hours required and no more. What this persons contract actually says is "Will work 8hrs a day, 5 days a week, on whatever tasks are assigned. Will be paid $$$". 'Gavin' is not doing this, and he's not even just being a bit flexible. He's actively pretending to work when he's not -- that's fraud / contract violation.

manigandham 5y ago
Sure, that's understandable. My perspective is that those agreements should be changed from "X hours per week" to just "accomplish tasks by their deadlines". If no tasks are assigned then how does blocking those hours benefit anyone? And if tasks are assigned, then what does it matter beyond the deadline being met?
- vertis 5y ago
  Okay, I want the whole project by the end of the day. /s It just doesn't work. Complexity of tasks, scope, resources all make for something that is very hard to measure. I agree with your sentiment, but it's hard to execute. However, the high-functioning teams I've been part of are certainly not checking if you're sitting in your seat at 9/5. They're not even worried if you take a long lunch, because they know that you can't cram every second of the day with programming work, but doing so 'in secret' is not okay.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    I agree with you on the "in secret" part, but where we differ is that I see that as a symptom of micromanagement by the company. It's not isolated to remote work either, there are plenty of people just sitting on social media at work until it's time to leave, and usually being overall less productive because of these forced hours. Whether there's trust (on both sides) to effectively make progress is an entirely different issue. Remote work just makes it more explicit.
- hermitcrab 5y ago
  Software engineering is a process of design/discovery. So it is often very hard to say how long something is going to take. For example a 'simple' change could unearth a bug in a third party library that ends up taking days to work around.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    I know. So what? People weren't actually productive for 40 hours in the office either, it was still based on timelines. Nothing has really changed here, other than trust actually being tested to a much larger degree. And perhaps people on both sides are finding out just how much trust there is.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Gavin' is not doing this, and he's not even just being a bit flexible. He's actively pretending to work when he's not -- that's fraud / contract violation. The fact that Guardian used this example simply causes them to lose credibility. Any half wit can see that Gavin’s case is not one of people opting to choose work where they have more time rather than money. This is yet another clear example of people trying to sell ads by creating “engagement” via content that causes outrage, even though it is nonsensical. I cannot solely blame the lack of journalists’ integrity, as I cannot imagine dealing with the challenges of a business model that got nuked in the span of 10 to 20 years.
- vertis 5y ago
  The rest of the article does go on to talk about more reasonable examples of people deciding not to go back to jobs, but I agree the Author would have been better served without 'Gavin' (from a credibility perspective).

bobthechef 5y ago

> Set the timelines and goals, and let the employee work however they want. If they deliver as agreed upon then what's the issue? Ah, but timelines can be influenced by how quickly something can be delivered. Scrum does this and encourages this as well. How many tickets are allocated to a sprint is dependent on the team velocity. If an employer sees that you can do more in time interval X, then he’ll put more on your plate. Many employers abhor a time vacuum and will fill it to squeeze out the most value. So one defense is to take your time. The more you bust your ass, the more you have on your plate. Another is to place strict limits on the time at work. Bust your ass all you want, but check out at time X every day.

manigandham 5y ago
I agree, and it's a much larger topic on time and expectation management. My point though is that many people are both overworked and have no work boundaries, which is the worst of both. Taking control back so that work serves their life instead of the other way around is much needed and good to see.