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How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

7pace.com

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Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#101

Post by welder »

_bxg1 wrote: post #55

I 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.

Sounds like WakaTime can help you. It's an automatic time tracker for programmers, but the part you would like:

It shows when you started and stopped working for the day.

An example chart: https://wakatime.com/blog/27-fill-the-gaps-in-your-coding-ac...

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#102

Post by wolco »

dahart wrote: post #74

> It’s like the company’s way of saying, “Sure, we trust you to do your job….but–just in case–we’re watching you.” This feels hyperbolic. There are legitimate reasons to measure time spent, and it doesn't amount to lack of trust. And similarly, failure to meet time expectations doesn't amount to shirking or lying. That said, I personally think it's wise to track your own time for a variety of reasons, one of which is…

I didn't realize that most were working 9-5 or some variation or less in the game industry. Do you find on most days you usually work 8 hours and leave. You work an hour extra one day but leave an hour earlier on friday?

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#103

Post by rodelrod »

bm98 wrote: post #59

Tracking 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 sw…

I just gave up on that and use an app that makes it super easy to go back and reconstruct [1]; either a few minutes after the context switch (I just type "-14 Project 2" and it changes the task 14 minutes in the past), or later through a nifty graphical interface.

The provided reports are also great, but if I need anything crazy, I can easily extract the data from the SQLite database.

It's been working for me for many years now.

[1] https://github.com/projecthamster/hamster

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#104

Post by welder »

> Click to start. Click to stop.

That's the problem right on their website[1]. Developers shouldn't have to waste time manually time tracking, it's been automated already[2]. Unless your programmers' time isn't worth much, you're better off not manually time tracking at all. Due to context switching, manual time tracking actually hurts overall productivity. I've heard people say they get in the habit of manually time tracking and don't think about it anymore, but that's just getting into the habit of getting distracted from the real work: shipping changes.

[1]: https://www.7pace.com/timetracker

[2]: Many tools already exist for automatic time tracking.

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#105

Post by smichael »

I keep a hledger timedot file[1] open in a hot-key drop-down iTerm window. Each 15-minute chunk is logged with a dot. I group dots into hours for quick visual scanning.

    2019-01-08
    fos.hledger.sup  .
    adm.email  ..
    adm.finance  .... .... ..
    fos.plaintextaccounting  .
    fos.hledger.issues.941  .... .
    has-res  ...
    biz-res  ..
I've trained myself to update this often while at the computer, and before walking away. Delayed retroactive logging is also pretty easy. Working in quarter/half/whole hour chunks, and in rhythm with the clock, and having a pane showing recent sleep/wake/timelog-saved events, all help. Not every day is the same; this system has been quick and flexible enough to suit a range of conditions. I can set daily/weekly/monthly time budgets if I want. Some more details at [2].

[1] http://hledger.org/timedot.html

[2] http://hledger.org/Time-planning.html#simons-hledger-time-da...

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#106

Post by atoav »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #88

The crux of the story is this sentence: "They’ve taken a tool that could give people more ownership over their own work and distorted it into a mechanism for managers to exert control over their team." This is true for every company, no matter the tool. This could equally apply to a Methodology, meetings, deliverables, timelines, or any other top-down approach designed around coercion. I'm reminded on Tom DeMarco's t…

In Film production control is crucial, because although the returns might be huge, only control allows you to get the best out of a limited budget. Good control means also to know precisely where to leave creative freedoms, otherwise you will end up exactly with a bad version of what was planned.

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#107

Post by stesch »

jgust wrote: post #39
stesch wrote: post #32

At 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.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was an intentional hack to get around some regulatory bullshit. >if we don't report whole number cap-ex hours on our return, we'll avoid an audit!

Nope.

When the hours of the tasks didn't add up with the daily attendance you had to tweak your data or you couldn't close the day. Either added or removed 1 minute to the work day.

So a work day with 8 hours maybe had 7.98 hours of tasks. You tweak around a bit so that they both matched.

This was a reported bug (incl. explanation from a programmer) that wasn't fixed for a very long time. Maybe it's still broken.

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#108

Post by jms »

spion wrote: post #72
bm98 wrote: post #59

Tracking 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 sw…

I have this in a cron: * 08-23 * * * ~/.local/bin/with-i3 '~/.local/bin/record-active-window' this is record-active-window: # set LOGFILE to whatever place you want to record things. echo "DATE = $(date +%s 2>&1)" >> $LOGFILE echo "IDLE = $(xprintidle)" >> $LOGFILE xprop -id $(xprop -root _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW | sed 's/.*# //') WM_CLASS WM_NAME 2>&1 >> $LOGFILE this is with-i3 #!/bin/bash source I was too lazy to figure…

Have you come across arbtt? It's a script that pretty much does exactly the same thing, but comes with a few extras for categorization and analysis.

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#109

Post by jms »

bm98 wrote: post #59

Tracking 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 sw…

I use different desktops for different tasks/clients and have a script that keeps track of which one I'm on.

Using the desktops is an extra bit of information I can use to give context to the robot to help with tracking.

Re: How Not to Do Time Tracking for Software Developers

#110

Post by erik_seaberg »

dnautics wrote: post #58
stesch wrote: post #32

At 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!!

It does seem a little aggressive to try to get an employee to do useful work in 2^-53 of an hour. First you'd need a keyboard that could report 25 trillion words per minute…
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