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I don't see how this solves the problem at all. I suppose it gives a "paper trail" that shows what you're working on each day. But my experience is that this s

I don't see how this solves the problem at all. I suppose it gives a "paper trail" that shows what you're working on each day. But my experience is that this sort of thing (as you observe) really rewards those who are good at writing and navigating the social waters... rather than really reflecting work. If a manager is reviewing snippets, you just need to say what he wants to hear. Even if it should be "Was kind of blah today, didn't get any work done, talked to Y about it for a while but still didn't do much", you'd of course write "Faced several challenges with X, but made progress; had meeting with Y and got useful feedback". It's sort of an art, especially when it comes to full performance reviews. I used to be something of a savant on the subject. I have yet to see ANY system which comes close to measuring programmer productivity, even in a relative way, that isn't prone to huge errors or gaming. Same problem with interviewing, really; often social adeptness is what's being measured.

ChuckMcM 13y ago
To be clear, I didn't say it solved the problem :-) I said Google tried to solve it. My experience of it was that it did have a bit of a 'motivating' effect (which is to say you felt bad if your snippet was 'read docs all day and am still confused', and it did have a bit of keeping track of things feel. But being self created, it varied a lot from engineer to engineer how the snippets read. And yes, it did test both social adeptness to some extent.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  It's an automated form of micro-management trying to get you to justify yourself every single day. Sounds horrid.
  - zeidrich 13y ago
    It's horrid if you use it to judge or justify, it's actually not so bad if it's something you use to record and analyze without judgment. That's to say if you do it personally for the purpose of self-improvement, it's fine, when there's a social aspect of trying to determine who is pulling their weight it's going to more dishonest.
    - rdtsc 13y ago
      > That's to say if you do it personally for the purpose of self-improvement, it's fine, Exactly. If hundreds of thousands of salary and tens of thousands of bonus dollars are tied to it, there is no doubt judging, gaming and justifying will be going on.
  - abrahamepton 13y ago
    I found the snippets helpful personally, in that I had a log of what I'd been working on at any given week (when I was there, they were weekly not daily). I don't think I was ever judged, at least not to my knowledge, about what I put in the snippets - they were informational, not evaluative. Pretty pleasant overall.
- JimboOmega 13y ago
  Oh, I know you didn't - you were, pretty obviously, criticizing it. I see it as a pretty common thing to do though... either on annual basis (as a performance review) or a daily one (as a standup). Granted the theory of the standup is nothing to do with measuring productivity, but it gets noticed.
- dhimes 13y ago
  That sounds like it can be a good personal motivator if it's done privately, though. It brings to mind what I do when I am having problems with my focus. I keep something like a "ship's log" of my time. I just note the time of day when I start doing something and then the time when my concentration breaks. Next to it I write what I was doing. Now I have a record of what I did, something like 1543-1555 fooled around on Hacker News 1555-1602 bathroom 1602-1619 worked on presentation 1620-1643 worked on presentation and so on. So I can look back and see that my focus wasn't very good- I 'came out of it' after just a few minutes. And in the same way that forcing myself to log what I eat helps my diet, after a few things like that above I find the discipline to keep persevering when my attention starts to wane. I think when we wear many hats we're susceptible to unproductive states of mind, and this little hack helps me a lot. But I don't think it would be a good idea for public display. Depending on the boss, maybe it would be ok if s/he looked at it, but I dunno. I've never had a boss I didn't completely trust, but I think I'm pretty lucky that way. Maybe snippets would work if they were just between a manager and his or her reports.
  - thothamon 13y ago
    Never had a boss you did not completely trust? NEVER? I'd say you're beyond pretty lucky and into extraordinarily fortunate, and congratulations to you. I've only had two bosses I completely trusted, and one of them is myself. And now that I think of it, I don't even completely trust myself.
    - dhimes 13y ago
      Never. I've only had a couple of bosses, and one (or two, if you count a research advisor) was in academia.
    - JimboOmega 13y ago
      Even if you do "trust" your boss, I still feel like there's a carefully curated image of yourself you want them to see. It's a pretty basic strategy - if everyone else is fluffing up their reports, you sure don't want to be the one who isn't.
  - 13y ago
bguthrie 13y ago
The closest solution I've seen to measuring programmer productivity is pairing, followed by peer evaluation. There is no hiding from a pair.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

To be clear, I didn't say it solved the problem :-) I said Google tried to solve it. My experience of it was that it did have a bit of a 'motivating' effect (which is to say you felt bad if your snippet was 'read docs all day and am still confused', and it did have a bit of keeping track of things feel. But being self created, it varied a lot from engineer to engineer how the snippets read. And yes, it did test both social adeptness to some extent.

mattmanser 13y ago
It's an automated form of micro-management trying to get you to justify yourself every single day. Sounds horrid.
- zeidrich 13y ago
  It's horrid if you use it to judge or justify, it's actually not so bad if it's something you use to record and analyze without judgment. That's to say if you do it personally for the purpose of self-improvement, it's fine, when there's a social aspect of trying to determine who is pulling their weight it's going to more dishonest.
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    > That's to say if you do it personally for the purpose of self-improvement, it's fine, Exactly. If hundreds of thousands of salary and tens of thousands of bonus dollars are tied to it, there is no doubt judging, gaming and justifying will be going on.
- abrahamepton 13y ago
  I found the snippets helpful personally, in that I had a log of what I'd been working on at any given week (when I was there, they were weekly not daily). I don't think I was ever judged, at least not to my knowledge, about what I put in the snippets - they were informational, not evaluative. Pretty pleasant overall.
JimboOmega 13y ago
Oh, I know you didn't - you were, pretty obviously, criticizing it. I see it as a pretty common thing to do though... either on annual basis (as a performance review) or a daily one (as a standup). Granted the theory of the standup is nothing to do with measuring productivity, but it gets noticed.
dhimes 13y ago
That sounds like it can be a good personal motivator if it's done privately, though. It brings to mind what I do when I am having problems with my focus. I keep something like a "ship's log" of my time. I just note the time of day when I start doing something and then the time when my concentration breaks. Next to it I write what I was doing. Now I have a record of what I did, something like 1543-1555 fooled around on Hacker News 1555-1602 bathroom 1602-1619 worked on presentation 1620-1643 worked on presentation and so on. So I can look back and see that my focus wasn't very good- I 'came out of it' after just a few minutes. And in the same way that forcing myself to log what I eat helps my diet, after a few things like that above I find the discipline to keep persevering when my attention starts to wane. I think when we wear many hats we're susceptible to unproductive states of mind, and this little hack helps me a lot. But I don't think it would be a good idea for public display. Depending on the boss, maybe it would be ok if s/he looked at it, but I dunno. I've never had a boss I didn't completely trust, but I think I'm pretty lucky that way. Maybe snippets would work if they were just between a manager and his or her reports.
- thothamon 13y ago
  Never had a boss you did not completely trust? NEVER? I'd say you're beyond pretty lucky and into extraordinarily fortunate, and congratulations to you. I've only had two bosses I completely trusted, and one of them is myself. And now that I think of it, I don't even completely trust myself.
  - dhimes 13y ago
    Never. I've only had a couple of bosses, and one (or two, if you count a research advisor) was in academia.
  - JimboOmega 13y ago
    Even if you do "trust" your boss, I still feel like there's a carefully curated image of yourself you want them to see. It's a pretty basic strategy - if everyone else is fluffing up their reports, you sure don't want to be the one who isn't.
- 13y ago

bguthrie 13y ago

The closest solution I've seen to measuring programmer productivity is pairing, followed by peer evaluation. There is no hiding from a pair.