/r/iamverysmart/
Many products have a key person. It's not really surprising.
I wouldn’t boast about writing software that “falls apart” by merely not having you around. Not exactly a high quality bar.
How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
51–60 of 136 posts
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually worked for a company where they didn't allow me to have a bathroom break during working hours while I was remoting...such is life as a 53yo developer trying to make any kind of living in this industry. In fact, I had to log X keystrokes and Y LOC every hour in order to be paid for that hour...talk about being a factory worker.
LOC means ‘loss of consciousness’ in my industry, but I do t think that fits. What is it here?
Lines Of Code.
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#53Fuck everything about these breathless, one-sentence-per-paragraph articles. It's infuriating to read.
* I agree.
* I only have time for bullet points :)
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#54I'm curious if anyone here has had success with more "coarsely grained" time tracking? I've found that I'd have no issues tracking my time by day or at most half-day increments, especially since for the most part that's how I end up working on things in a lot of cases (as a developer, not a manager). I feel like it would give most of the same benefits with a magnitude less work, but I haven't ever tried it out in a r…
I only care about coarse grained time tracking on my team. I estimate to the quarter day at the smallest, if any task is smaller than that, it shouldn't be a separate WBS item. After all, my end-of-year bean-counter statistics are all based on person days anyways, and I'm not a consultant, so why would I care about tracking to the 15 minute increment?
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#55I just make mine super vague. I put in the number of hours I was in the office, and I summarize most days with some variation on "Made improvements and bug fixes". That's the only way I can spend time doing anything other than actively writing code without stressing out about it.
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many products have a key person. It's not really surprising.
I wouldn’t boast about writing software that “falls apart” by merely not having you around. Not exactly a high quality bar.
I wouldn't read that much into it without even asking for elaboration, "it fell apart" can mean a lot of things including "they messed it up after I left". That it really just fell apart under its own weight without anyone doing anything is probably the weakest plausible interpretation of what they wrote. After all, if it brought in $100M/year yet was of low quality, why didn't they hire some people to recreate a better version of the thing real quick?
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#57I track my time, too, and my biggest complaint is how long it takes. I think it's a great idea for companies to show why time tracking matters so it doesn't feel so futile.
If in the US definitely a company fail to inform. Done properly developer salary supported by time records can help qualify some portion of the salary for the R&D tax credit. At least that's what they tell us where I slave (a $FORTUNE_500) Where things fall apart for me is logging overhead time, like time spent waking up with the first cup of coffee while reading company emails or doing IT-ish tasks on my dev system.…
Lol, I remember being in a billable environment and making so much shit up. Reading emails? Billed to project Y. Bathroom break? Billed to project X. Politely listening to my boss gab? Billed to project Z.
Now that I manage my own team I let them abuse the Other time entry. I only expect 70-80% billable anyways, which lines up with studies on productivity. Anybody expecting 100% productivity is an idiot and anybody reporting 100% productivity is a liar.
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#58At my last employment they had a time tracking software that said that three tasks @ 20 minutes each are 0.99… hours. Hmm. As a software developer you get really frustrated when you have to deal with this expensive piece of software.
IEEE floating point is hard!!
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#59Tracking time is part and parcel of being a consultant, at least if you have multiple clients and overlapping work. After doing it for 15+ years, I've tried it all - everything from the spreadsheet, to the apps, to forgetting and having to go back and reconstruct.
I read this article and I think it's missing the point about what's so hard about time tracking.
What's hard is: Implementing the trigger on the context switch.
You're working on one thing, something happens and you make a context switch to something else - and in order to track your time, you need a trigger to fire to prompt you to record the switch. It doesn't matter if it's in a spreadsheet or an app or on a piece of paper - I find that my brain doesn't fire that trigger very reliably. Especially if I'm busy.
If someone can solve that problem with a fancy app, I'd be impressed!
I've said it in another thread [1]: I want a robot that watches me and quietly makes intelligent decisions about what I'm really doing, and tracks that.
Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers
#60I'll certainly bill my long weekend runs where I get most of my best ideas.