Measure results, not hours • Hacker News Board

Re: Measure results, not hours

#61

Post by scotty79 » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:23 AM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #44

I completely agree with this. Measuring productivity solely by hours in front of a screen is completely useless. On the other hand, tracking hours can be really benificial too, if done correctly. I love using DeskTime.com for personal use (for company use it seems counterproductive) since it lets me easily track how much time I've spent on productive apps/web sites compared to unproductive apps/web sites. Yesterday I…

Productive hours are the right thing to measure. Some task can take few hours or minutes depending on luck. Also expeirience but that's already factored into your hourly rate. If you had fixed (low) pay for adding missing coma you'd have to swollow the risk that it might take you hours and pay a little. That's what most programmers and lawers try to avoid by charging hourly rates.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#62

Post by khet » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:39 AM UTC

If I get my work done in 2 hours, do I have to work an extra 6 hours as punishment for being super competent?

What constitutes as enough work/value for a day?

Re: Measure results, not hours

#63

Post by mkempe » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:52 AM UTC

Evbn wrote: post #12

jaggederest wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the American educational system was set up by industrialists to produce a trained workforce, not for some sort of noble philosophical ideal of enlightenment. You'll note that none of the scions of industry attend public school.

Private schools are mostly the same structurally, they just have better tracking/pace since class sizes are smaller, and they can exclude disruptive students.

Montessori schools do not follow the assembly-line model of education.

Montessori schools are all private because institutionalized educational systems aren't interested in switching their fundamental philosophy of education. There is one exception, the Milwaukee school system. I'm not aware of other places that have tried the same.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#64

Post by meric » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:56 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #58

Evbn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is clearly fraud and worth suing and winning over. Charging standard "shop hours" like a mechanic, in advance, is one thing, but just making up a price afterward and pretending it was hours worked?

Billing client for reading internet, paper or chatting by the watercooler is also a fraud. Yet noone cares. As long as client is satisfied with results and the price everything else doesn't matter all that much.

  Billing client for reading internet, paper or chatting by the watercooler is also a fraud.

Exactly. That's why you don't do it.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#65

Post by camwest » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 12:27 PM UTC

Apreche wrote: post #16

This seems to be common sense to everyone who is not a "boss" and unheard of to anyone who is. Find me a company that actually follows this philosophy, and sign me up. I have yet to find one real example. Here's the real problem companies face with people like me. If I only had to get the work done, I could be in the office for maybe one day a week. With all that free time, I would be able to do something on my own s…

This is silly. A company doesn't hire you to get a specific thing done. A company hires you to achieve specific results continuously. If you are able to achieve those results, they raise the bar to take advantage.

For example. A company goal might be to increase revenue 10% month over month. This might get broken up by each level of management into smaller and smaller tasks until it hits your desk under the guise of 'Make sure the website is internationalized since we're translating to 3 languages at the end of this month'.

If you are able to accomplish that task early, that doesn't mean your job is done, that just means that you can do more to help contribue to the company increasing their revenue by 10% month over month.

Also: Keep in mind that no one knows for sure if the tactics chosen to accomplish a goal will actually work. They are guesses. Redoing the website, starting the new marketing campaign, landing the new client, delivering a project on time, are all just things we do to increase the odds of achieving our goals.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#66

Post by rpwilcox » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 1:51 PM UTC

jonathanwallace wrote: post #2

Wow, this sounds like it came directly out of the ROWE playbook, http://www.gorowe.com/ , something we practice at my job to much success.

I also would be interested in a blog post about this. Seems to me (and some other commentators) on this thread, that very often there's an "infinite" amount of work to do, and I don't see how that squares with "we pay you for results".

A team I was on a few years ago did scrum (poorly). We had a list of tickets the product owner wanted done for the sprint. Except, more often than not, additional tickets would be added into the sprint (Either because us engineers found dependencies or because of additional bug requests).

Scrum doctrine says that you now have a broken sprint, and all bets are off. Did it matter to management? Nope.

This was a large Rails project (about 7 full time developers for a year+). It's possible it's different when you're working on many small projects.

I guess my worry about ROWE is situations where the result is, "Implementing all your tickets on your plate" and worries about what happens in environments where tickets get added to your plate such that the number of your tickets on Thursday == the number of your tickets on Tuesday. (Even though you implemented 6 tickets between now and then). I would certainly be interested in any comments/information/thought you have on a situation like that.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#67

Post by aubreyrhodes » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 1:54 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #29

jonathanwallace wrote: post #2

Wow, this sounds like it came directly out of the ROWE playbook, http://www.gorowe.com/ , something we practice at my job to much success.

Can you explain how your company uses ROWE? Was it there when you started, or did you witness the shift from hour-based work/pay to results-based work/pay?

I work in the same place as Jonathan, and have found working in a results only work environment to be an extreme step up. I started after the transition, and it was a very obliviously different environment than anywhere else we work.

The way we work is that we have very focused week or month or quarterly results we are responsible for, and we have a very transparent way of seeing who needs to do what and what is getting done. Beyond that, it's a big part of our culture not to be negative is someone chooses to work different hours or out of the office. It's their results to complete, and they know how they work most effectively.

You've got a bunch of stuff up on our blog about ROWE as well: http://highgroove.com/tags/rowe

Re: Measure results, not hours

#68

Post by jimfl » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 2:00 PM UTC

nevster wrote: post #57

"Doing a half-day?" is the remark I hate hearing the most when leaving at 5. It's said as a joke and yet it's not. Upvotes for the person who can come up with a good come-back! (Note, this is not a problem where I work at the moment. And even at places where it's been said, I just ignore it. Just leave at 5 people!)

Good kids don't get detention.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#69

Post by jimfl » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 2:04 PM UTC

Give up trying to measure people against some standard yardstick. It doesn't work in school, it doesn't work at work. People have a complex set of inter-relating competencies, and managing them is challenging work, not an exercise in stack ranking them by some index. Don't be lazy.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#70

Post by PakG1 » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 4:25 PM UTC

shadowmint wrote: post #27

Mm... great article, but I can't help feeling it skips over the important bits. "But your boss is likely to be receptive if you politely raise the question of productivity and show you’re willing to be held accountable for results, rather than hours worked." Yeah right. The problem is that it's extremely non trivial to deconstruct your assumptions and social behaviour. Even if your boss/manager/whatever is clued up a…

The few people who actually know what he does completely respect him; but no one else gets it.

I am curious for this guy whether he doesn't care. For me, I'm similar in some respects at my workplace. I don't do the things that I think are BS and a waste of time, even if they're mandated by various senior people. Though some things, I do if my manager talks with me privately, asking me to help him get it done for whatever political reason may exist (politics is usually the only reason why I do things that are garbage, and my manager has to convince me).

I don't do the best work in the world, but I am above-average at my workplace. I am given a lot of the high-priority and difficult projects. I recently have been first or second choice for various role changes, which I'd normally jump at if my current projects were not so critical and the fact that I'd already committed (I am one of the cheesy guys who says that my word is stronger than oak). The fact is, I have the respect of the people I deem most important, and that's proven out by who gets what projects, and how I'm given a long leash for various stupid things. I don't care what any of my peers would think, though the fact is that most of them do respect me and many come to me for advice about various matters.

I agree that it's possible it won't work. But I'd also say nobody should be cocky enough to start doing this until they've truly proven themselves through multiple hellfire crises (i.e. established track record when the chips are down). With a proper track record, there is no reason why it won't work.

And in that scenario, even if it's only a few people who respect me, that's enough. They are the ones I care about. If 95% of the company thinks I'm doing nothing or am worthless, that's fine. What matters to me is if I'm respected by the 5% who take care of my raises, promotion opportunities, and company strategy and budgets.