If you want to monitor my work PC usage, you also need to take into account my unbidden shower-time work insights. And my countless 3 AM waking work thoughts. And the dreams I’ve had about my job that are really hard to quantify, but which played a role in the solutions I have provided.
And all the outside-of-work time spent exploring and evaluating the ideas I came across from just being interested in the state of the art. And what I learned from building hobby projects that put those ideas to the test with things that nobody cares about except for me, instead of trying them out for the first time on the company’s flagship product.
And.
You also need to account for all the time I had nothing to do because I wasn’t allowed to proceed since I was waiting for the Product Owners to approve the development effort, and they rescheduled the meeting four times.
You need to account for the times when I asked for more work and wasn’t given any for three days, and was told to “just be available.”
You need to account for when my workspace broke when someone in Security blocked ALL of eclipse.org because “you can’t trust that open source stuff,” and your sanctioned resolution process is slower than a tortoise on quaaludes.
You need to account for choosing to band-aid your tech debt until even the scion of [Rube Goldberg, Frankenstein’s Monster, IE11’s Quirks Mode, accidental dynamic scope, the Pennsylvania Lottery] told you that the latest “feature” would break stuff with 100% confidence, and you still went for it.
I stopped putting sugar in my coffee and I think it might be affecting my outlook.
>If you want to monitor my work PC usage, you also need to take into account my unbidden shower-time work insights. And my countless 3 AM waking work thoughts. And the dreams I’ve had about my job that are really hard to quantify, but which played a role in the solutions I have provided.
And if they just want to see you glued to your PC 24/7, doing work stuff, and if not they'll fire you?
That's an easy response for an in-demand job like programming, but for other jobs, from call centers to all kinds of services (translation, accounting, etc.), it can be met much more sternly by employers.
What's really needed is a more massive societal rejection of this, similar to how people would respond to monitoring school bathrooms...
One of the best sayings I've heard is that you don't charge for the time it takes you to do something, you charge for all the time it took you to learn how to do it.
University isn't free, time spent learning as a junior (probably at another company) isn't free, and programming isn't something anyone can do well. The only real measure should be the result.
"Do I owe you something?" "That's 100 pesetas". "100 pesetas just for tightening a screw?" "No, that's free. It's 100 pesetas for knowing which screw needed to be tightened".
I think that’s a riff in Steinmetz’s bill[1] to the Ford Motor company for fixing a generator.
“ According to Scott, Steinmetz listened to the generator and scribbled computations on the notepad … Then he told Ford’s skeptical engineers to remove a plate at the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil. They did, and the generator performed to perfection.
Henry Ford was thrilled until he got an invoice from General Electric in the amount of $10,000. Ford acknowledged Steinmetz’s success but balked at the figure. He asked for an itemized bill.
Steinmetz, Scott wrote, responded personally to Ford’s request with the following:
This story probably happened —maybe not exactly as told here; however, the framework of someone making something ordinary valuable through precise application of knowledge is likely older than Steinmetz.
I worked for a company a number of years ago which demanded accounting of everything company related so I did indeed timesheet stuff I did outside of the office. I got paid for it. Of course I mentioned this to colleagues who did a combination of the same and putting any old shit in it to get paid.
Eventually after a few weeks the requirement to timesheet our work was removed. Clearly it was costing more money than they anticipated. This was under the guise that they trusted us and didn’t need the reporting any more (bullshit!)
One of the glorious things about timesheets is that they are an interesting infallibility paradox. The owner of the timesheet system will tend not to question what is recorded as it proves the system is fallible, so you can record anything.
> You also need to account for all the time I had nothing to do because I wasn’t allowed to proceed since I was waiting for the Product Owners to approve the development effort, and they rescheduled the meeting four times.
> You need to account for the times when I asked for more work and wasn’t given any for three days, and was told to “just be available.”
If they want you available from 9-5, then they are accounting for that time. Well, they're paying you for that time at least.
It’s a problem when I have to report all my hours and “twiddling my thumbs due to corporate incompetence” is not a valid time code. But yes, it should be if that’s how they choose to go about it.
Tell me about it... My own experience with forced fun and creepy contests that encroach on free time has left me in a state where I wouldn't be shocked if a company one day didn't introduce a "dream tracker system" where employees wear electrodes at night and are expected to compete for the scientifically recommended amount and kind of sleep, to drive down premiums.
And all the outside-of-work time spent exploring and evaluating the ideas I came across from just being interested in the state of the art. And what I learned from building hobby projects that put those ideas to the test with things that nobody cares about except for me, instead of trying them out for the first time on the company’s flagship product.
And.
You also need to account for all the time I had nothing to do because I wasn’t allowed to proceed since I was waiting for the Product Owners to approve the development effort, and they rescheduled the meeting four times.
You need to account for the times when I asked for more work and wasn’t given any for three days, and was told to “just be available.”
You need to account for when my workspace broke when someone in Security blocked ALL of eclipse.org because “you can’t trust that open source stuff,” and your sanctioned resolution process is slower than a tortoise on quaaludes.
You need to account for choosing to band-aid your tech debt until even the scion of [Rube Goldberg, Frankenstein’s Monster, IE11’s Quirks Mode, accidental dynamic scope, the Pennsylvania Lottery] told you that the latest “feature” would break stuff with 100% confidence, and you still went for it.
I stopped putting sugar in my coffee and I think it might be affecting my outlook.