I bill less than 8 hours a day (normally) but I work that much. I just don't feel like I should bill for what I call "stupid time" or getting stuck on something that, were I faster and more knowledgable, would only take 1/3 the time.
A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
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Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have a daily stand-up at 9:30, so even though you get in at 9, you don't bother starting anything because the stand-up will cut it short as soon as you get rolling. The stand-up is supposed to be 10 minutes, tops, but regularly balloons into a half-hour behemoth. You make your daily sojourn to Starbucks with the other developers and get back to your open work area at 10:15. There's a business user waiting for you…
Until 4PM, you've also been working on things that are value-adds on some level. Your choice not to make use of the small time windows (which aren't actually so small) is your own choice, not a direct function of the office.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#53I bill less than 8 hours a day (normally) but I work that much. I just don't feel like I should bill for what I call "stupid time" or getting stuck on something that, were I faster and more knowledgable, would only take 1/3 the time.
In this case I hope you also charge the fast and knowledgeable rate.
Otherwise you sell yourself short.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#54Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#55And somehow we manage to outperform our office counterparts. PG talks about how some people can produce 10-100x more than others and that those who produce 100x should start their own companies. The idea is that you will be rewarded for your huge productivity with huge rewards. The flip side of this is that you could work a normal job from home and work 1-20% of normal job hours and make a decent wage with tons of fr…
Or, if you're willing to omit a lot of personal details to your employer, one could also work 2 or 3 jobs in parallel this way.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#56I wouldn't care if my employees did five minutes of work at home per day as long as they get things done in similar amounts compared to their peers.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that movie was pre-facebook, he was not wasting time on the internet.
Yeah, the internet sure sucked before Facebook came along and added... nothing.
I've been using the internet at work since 1997. But it was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is now. "Surfing the web" was generally something people did at home, on a 56k modem. A software engineer fixing the Y2K bug in bank software probably didn't have much access, and probably didn't care a whole lot anyway. Certainly, the movie made no mention of the internet.
And obviously facebook was merely an example. 1999 was pre-reddit, pre-wikipedia, pre-digg, pre-hacker news, and pre-twitter. Yahoo had just bought viaweb. Most of the people using the web today weren't using it in 1999, and most of the pages, services, and content that exist today did not exist in 1999.
The point is that no matter how distracting the internet might be, procrastination has always been an issue for developers.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#58In the office, I'd be lucky to have a net work day of +1 hour.
Sometimes, friction and bad decisions can make you work -8 hours a day. Or worse.
Also, for some people, definition of "work" in a big company is "presence". So, that's obviously not fitting for a telecomuter.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you take notes, you can gain context from 9:00-9:30, and rev up again quickly from 10:00-10:03. The time doesn't need to be wasted time. (Not that this is necessarily easy to do, or perfect, but I think we can accomplish more than we think in this manner.)
Notes like all other forms of documentation is suspect. If it's a complex problem that you don't already have a solution to you really do need to sit there and think "Why did I think this when I wrote it." otherwise it's easy to create flip flopping bugs. AKA fix bug 357, fix bug 372, hey wait bug 385 looks like 357 ahh that's right I need to set the flag to X, hmm wait bug 392 looks a lot like bug 372 etc. PS: And w…
What I meant by "notes" was just scribbling down your thoughts as you go along - things like "$property modified between file.php:500 and :600? WTF". Enough data to jog your memory when you get back to your desk and then throw away once you solve the bug and document the fix in a real fashion.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#60Here is an interesting article that sees telecommuting as an increasing phenomena:
http://mashable.com/2011/09/17/work-from-home-infographi/
Telecommuting reduces overhead cost (rent, utility, etc) and gas usages but it's still important to maintain rapport with your team. Yay video teleconferencing!