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The problem is, at least in my experience, the ratio of people who would use it for good vs those who would misuse it would be very bad. Of course, it's also t

The problem is, at least in my experience, the ratio of people who would use it for good vs those who would misuse it would be very bad. Of course, it's also the employee's fault for getting into such an environment in the first place, but sometimes you just need the job. I use ManicTime Tracker, if my boss got hold of all the data contained in there, he would probably consider firing me - I average more than 2 solid hours of surfing the web on any given workday... wait, I have the exact data :) , that's the point! I was at my work PC for 1059 hours so far this year. Of those, I spent 325 hours on Firefox and 95 on Chrome, that averages about 13 hours a week of web surfing (probably 10 hours procrastinating or reading and 3 actually researching problems). I also spend a shocking 8 hours a week reading and replying to mail (to be fair, we don't have any bug tracking or project management, so mail becomes both), and 5 hours a week on SQL (I do a lot of querying and reporting). I'm less than 4 hours a week actually on a development environment, split between VB6, .NET and Forte4GL (our ugly legacy system). And I was hired to be a "systems analyst"... And that's only time spent at the PC, it doesn't count time wasted on meetings and stuff. This is a real-life example of why they say that on a large corporation, you only do actual work 1 or 2 hours a day (as opposed to a startup where you might do code or programming-related stuff 6 or 7 hours, I hope :) ). It's really depressing to put it in numbers. Fortunately, I'm going to quit next year and dedicate full-time to my startup (which is just getting started right now :) ).

JoeAltmaier 14y ago
It's called Short Timer's Syndrome. When you know you're leaving, your dedication and work ethic plummet. You don't need a lot of statistics to notice it; you just have to be looking. Many managers are too busy looking up the management tree, sucking up to superiors, working their own career to actually manage their subordinates. If you're expecting to leave then you're in luck, they won't notice. But that's probably the reason you're leaving too!
- GFischer 14y ago
  I didn't know it had an official name :) . There are papers and everything (example: http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf ) I guess surfing the web is a form of short-timing - I can't actually leave early or come in late, since I'm heavily penalized for those, like any self-respecting bureaucracy, my company equals time at the desk with productivity, and heavily penalizes lateness.
king_jester 14y ago
There is no doubt extensive tracking data would be just another item in the micromanagement toolkit for many companies. What is interesting is that companies are succeeding without that kind of analytical data on programmers and IT staff, so you can imagine that having that data would only increase incidents that make people want to quit and do nothing to help with management or productivity. > Of course, it's also the employee's fault for getting into such an environment in the first place, but sometimes you just need the job. That someone ends up in a shitty workplace isn't their fault. You can fault someone for actively making their workplace worse, but sometimes you end up in a bad place, either out of necessity or just plain bad luck. This kind of attitude towards workers in the workplace only hurts people's ability to find meaningful work and places to work.

JoeAltmaier 14y ago

It's called Short Timer's Syndrome. When you know you're leaving, your dedication and work ethic plummet. You don't need a lot of statistics to notice it; you just have to be looking. Many managers are too busy looking up the management tree, sucking up to superiors, working their own career to actually manage their subordinates. If you're expecting to leave then you're in luck, they won't notice. But that's probably the reason you're leaving too!

GFischer 14y ago
I didn't know it had an official name :) . There are papers and everything (example: http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf ) I guess surfing the web is a form of short-timing - I can't actually leave early or come in late, since I'm heavily penalized for those, like any self-respecting bureaucracy, my company equals time at the desk with productivity, and heavily penalizes lateness.

king_jester 14y ago

There is no doubt extensive tracking data would be just another item in the micromanagement toolkit for many companies. What is interesting is that companies are succeeding without that kind of analytical data on programmers and IT staff, so you can imagine that having that data would only increase incidents that make people want to quit and do nothing to help with management or productivity. > Of course, it's also the employee's fault for getting into such an environment in the first place, but sometimes you just need the job. That someone ends up in a shitty workplace isn't their fault. You can fault someone for actively making their workplace worse, but sometimes you end up in a bad place, either out of necessity or just plain bad luck. This kind of attitude towards workers in the workplace only hurts people's ability to find meaningful work and places to work.