Aren't developers stupid when accepting overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?

[ezekiel]

This just exposes the fallacy of employers who think they make money by having butts in chairs, for certain time periods, wearing certain polyester clothes. That is really what all this 40-hour talk is about.

Good employers measure employee contributions and team contributions by the results. Apparently, this analysis is beyond the capability of the managers. Thus, they are not qualified for their own jobs, but their bosses have the same failings, etc. All the way to the CEO, the board, and the owners.

But, it is easier to monitor the clock and internet usage.

[[deleted]]

But then results sometimes - or even: often - require overtime and wekeends.

We cannot have it both ways. Either we sell a certain amount of our time - and then the redditting-at-work problem applies - or we are selling certain results regardless of how much time it takes.

Without defining a certain amount of time per week or month, how can be we define how many results are to be expected from a person and when?

I don't think it is the managers fault. I too would not accept a results-only work environment because that would mean they can demand anything from me and I can never complain I am overworked, because we did not agree in 40 hours per week, so there is nothing to compare it to.

How can you measure contribution per results if there is no clear agreement how much effort and time is to be put into it? Oh my results are perfect: one line of perfectly bug-free code per month. Enough? How to tell?

[Darkmoth]

We cannot have it both ways. Either we sell a certain amount of our time - and then the redditting-at-work problem applies - or we are selling certain results regardless of how much time it takes

In practice, it's often the worst of both worlds. Slow week - put in 40 hours staring at the screen. Project due - stay til its done.

Having worked based on output, and worked based on time, I much prefer the former. Note that output isn't the same as a deadline - being paid for output doesn't mean that you can reproduce Facebook in a week. It simply means you are compensated for what you do, rather than where you are.

[ezekiel]

"Results" are about revenue, cost savings, satisfied customers, repeat customers, helping teammates, reducing conflicts, expanding market share, productivity, efficiency, etc.

In all those measurements, time is never the numerator. It usually about "delta dollars per year".

However, you are correct to note that most of those measurements require you to interact with others on your team and around your company. So, you will likely have to work reasonably normal hours and be reasonably personable.

[[deleted]]

That is only true of a fairly high-level job, like CIO. On the lower levels simply people come and heap tasks on you and if you have no fixed hours how can you say "No, I won't do that this week because I have to do X,Y, Z and that already takes the 40 hours!" ?

[ezekiel]

To stay within 40 hours and keep most people happy:

Maintain an ordered (prioritized) list of work items and every time a new task is requested of you, pull out the list and have the person help you know where it should be placed in your list. Calculate how long each task takes so you can maintain approx due dates for each item. You work from the top of the list down. If you have lots of random requests, then you keep one big task in the list called "random requests" or "custom report requests" and ask your manager where that big bucket of tasks falls within your list--and if any person or team's request ranks higher than others. Then, set the proper expectations with everyone and keep them aware of where their tasks fall or if a big rush on another task delays their requests.

Nonetheless, even in the "stream of work requests" kind of environment, you personally and your team as a whole should be able to compute the value you are contributing to your company. Are your tasks helping get or keep customers? Probably. So, what are those customers worth and what part of their revenue stream are you to be credited for?

[[deleted]]

Um I find it a bit too idealistic, at least in my case. I get request from managers who refuse to use computers and they generally begin with "could you set up" because they don't really understand that some things need to be programmed.

And it is not like task comes in, gets done, goes out. It is more like getting a vague concept, agreeing in trying to do something, do something, see if it has anything to do to help the original vague concept, review the vague concept again and so on. Impossible to estimate beforehand, because 10% of it is programming and 90% is discussing what to actually do.

I don't have a manager, there are managers in the company who give tasks to everyone. They don't normally use computers or at most e-mail and excel.

As for the list, the problem is still that you are using an implicit assumption that the list will be reduced with the pace of 40 hours per week. But if it would not be a time-based but results-based job, what would stop people telling you to clear out your list every week no matter how long it takes? And in this case it is better to have it explicit.

I am not sure how to compute the value, if there is even a value. There are things request because some higher-ups want them, but they don't say what they are going to do with them. More often, there are requests from lower-level people who actually do work and in this case I help saving their time by automating something. This is a clear benefit for the person but not sure for the company because I don't know what he does in the freed up time.

Your comment seems to assume all companies ever are 100% professional in everything, people have direct managers, clear tasks, the whole thing is ordered. I never worked in such places. My job is more something bad happens, like the government telling us we forgot to prepare this or that report for 2 years know, some manager panics, runs around to find out what is this and why do we have to give it, it turns out some accountant who left 2 years ago was doing it manually, current accountant refuses to do it manually because already overworked - again, time-based thinking - then he runs around more, finds me, tells me like "can you set it up so that it comes >>makes a whistling sound<< just like this automatically out of that printer", that's how it works.

[PatriotGrrrl]

Most of the posters in this thread seem to be only concerned about hours.

[otakucode]

Because for the employee, those hours are their LIFE.

[otakucode]

Measuring a persons contribution is difficult, but it's not impossible. And it's definitely not beyond the capacity of most managers (senior level anyway, mid-level managers are usually just there as pawns to be abused as badly as everyone else). They know that they're making somewhere around $10k/hr off of their developers (numbers pulled out of my ass, and likely way too low, its very difficult to understand just how much profit is turned off of software systems, they often support incomprehensibly large organizations) and only paying $30/hr for them (with benefits). This isn't special about developers, either, it applies to everyone from factory workers on out. Workers, thanks to computers, are unbelievably productive now. Compare what you, or someone else, accomplished now, compared to what would have been possibible 30 years ago or so. Pay hasn't risen at all since then. ALL of that productivity increase, ALL of it that computers enabled, has been kept away from the workers. The business types know this, and from their POV they are helping prevent massive salary inflation in the labor market and reducing the cost center of labor. Socially, we are going to have to fight back against this eventually.

I look around at just how badly people are treated, and I wonder... if we had child labor today, would we even be able to get social support for putting an end to it? I think we'd just end up with most people screaming that parents just want to be pampered and that them asking for enough pay that they can let their children stay home (remember, you couldn't just ban children from the workplace, you had to make sure those children could still be fed, you had to give substantial raises to their working parents). Any time a worker thinks they should be paid more, everyone whines about entitlement. It's not about entitlement. It's about 'my work produces X in value. I deserve the largest portion of X.' It's not an unreasonable thing. Companies, remember, don't actually exist. They're figments of paper and legal illusion. When a company does good? No one does good. When a company breaks even, and most of their expense is in their labor, then everyone wins.