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Judge him only on his performance. If you can't do that then you are a bad employer. His work performance is what you pay for. It's up to him to make sure he

Judge him only on his performance. If you can't do that then you are a bad employer. His work performance is what you pay for. It's up to him to make sure he delivers on that promise.

mightybyte 18y ago
I'll second this. The issue of whether you are paying for his time or his performance is a cloudy one. The paying for time argument invariably gets into issues like how much other unproductive time you spend doing things like talking to coworkers, using the bathroom, staring out the window, and browsing the web. In general it seems to degenerate into the horribly inflexible clock-out-when-you-go-to-the-bathroom factory-ish policy. So if you are happy with his actual concrete performance, then I'd say don't worry about it. If he can make you happy spending 15 minutes of real work per day, then you need to think hard about how to better leverage his talents. Unfortunately, increasing your expectations of him while keeping everyone else the same will not make him happy either. It's still a tough issue.
euroclydon 18y ago
Performance Metrics: Many companies view this as overhead. It's sort of a pain in the ass, so if I have to do it because my employee is working on the side, then he needs to carry the burden compiling the metrics. He could stay on-site an extra half hour per day and generate a report on what he did, or I could generate the metrics, and just pay him a little less for this inconvenience.
- icey 18y ago
  If he's your employee, you really should have a feel for how long it takes him to get something done. You should also know what sort of quality to expect from him. If you can't determine those things, then one of you is not doing your job already.
ntoshev 18y ago
Measuring performance of programmers (or knowledge workers in general) is an unsolved problem.
- johnrob 18y ago
  Not when you are deciding whether or not someone should be let go. Every employer should know whether a developer is doing an acceptable job.
- mightybyte 18y ago
  Objective, concrete, quantifiable metrics are the unsolved problem. Every one that I've ever heard of can be gamed by the developer. The only exception to this that I can think of is the metric of product success in the market. But it's too large-scale to be useful in measuring individual employees. Subjective metrics are quite common and effective. That's how good programmers such as <insert favorite hacker hero here> are regarded as good.
  - ntoshev 18y ago
    Subjective metrics include observation over a long period of time. It may be months before you are sure someone good is underperforming.

Judge him only on his performance. If you can't do that then you are a bad employer. His work performance is what you pay for. It's up to him to make sure he delivers on that promise.

mightybyte 18y ago

I'll second this. The issue of whether you are paying for his time or his performance is a cloudy one. The paying for time argument invariably gets into issues like how much other unproductive time you spend doing things like talking to coworkers, using the bathroom, staring out the window, and browsing the web. In general it seems to degenerate into the horribly inflexible clock-out-when-you-go-to-the-bathroom factory-ish policy. So if you are happy with his actual concrete performance, then I'd say don't worry about it. If he can make you happy spending 15 minutes of real work per day, then you need to think hard about how to better leverage his talents. Unfortunately, increasing your expectations of him while keeping everyone else the same will not make him happy either. It's still a tough issue.

euroclydon 18y ago

Performance Metrics: Many companies view this as overhead. It's sort of a pain in the ass, so if I have to do it because my employee is working on the side, then he needs to carry the burden compiling the metrics. He could stay on-site an extra half hour per day and generate a report on what he did, or I could generate the metrics, and just pay him a little less for this inconvenience.

icey 18y ago
If he's your employee, you really should have a feel for how long it takes him to get something done. You should also know what sort of quality to expect from him. If you can't determine those things, then one of you is not doing your job already.

ntoshev 18y ago

Measuring performance of programmers (or knowledge workers in general) is an unsolved problem.

johnrob 18y ago
Not when you are deciding whether or not someone should be let go. Every employer should know whether a developer is doing an acceptable job.
mightybyte 18y ago
Objective, concrete, quantifiable metrics are the unsolved problem. Every one that I've ever heard of can be gamed by the developer. The only exception to this that I can think of is the metric of product success in the market. But it's too large-scale to be useful in measuring individual employees. Subjective metrics are quite common and effective. That's how good programmers such as <insert favorite hacker hero here> are regarded as good.
- ntoshev 18y ago
  Subjective metrics include observation over a long period of time. It may be months before you are sure someone good is underperforming.