Measure results, not hours • Hacker News Board

Re: Measure results, not hours

#81

Post by apaprocki » Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 10:32 AM UTC

wilfra wrote: post #22

tkahn6 wrote: post #6

The hourly rate thing has always bothered me. At my internship at Bloomberg the maximum amount of billable hours per week was 40 and usually they'd expect you to put in 8 hours a day. More often than not, I'd finish an assigned task before the day or week was through or I'd be 'direction blocked' where I would be waiting for approval in a design/architecture decision from my mentor or manager while they were busy wit…

Was it like that for people who had been on the job for years, or just interns? If just interns, they probably had issues in the past with not doing it this way. You've got to earn trust etc.

Interns are managed differently because they're paid by the hour. Regular employees account for time spent on various projects, but that has nothing to do with your pay and is just a tool for accounting R&D time back to various business units for overall business planning.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#82

Post by jonathanwallace » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

rpwilcox wrote: post #77

MattRogish wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work with Jonathan as a client - and my organization also does ROWE. I can say for a certainty that it works great for Rails projects. It comes down to intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. Hours, made-up deadlines, etc. are all forms of extrinsic motivation which have been proven to destroy creativity, problem solving, and productivity. ROWE needs to be a part of a bigger whole at how we look at and motivate employe…

Yes, Agile in not a panacea: you can't just drop it into an existing org and expect things to be rainbows and kittens. It needs to be accepted both at the grass-roots level AND management level. Then when Agile fails a person or an organization it's Agile's (or Scrum's) fault... when it's really a people problem. I guess I'm just waiting for the blog articles, 10 years from now, bemoaning ROWE because it didn't save…

As an addendum to what Matt said, like any substantial initiative, ROWE needs support from the whole organization to succeed.

But as you mention Ryan, it is super easy for those being measured to game metrics and optimize so that they look good. Mitigating this effect is very challenging and one that we continually face but our approach, and it has held up well so far, is to focus on people over process. I.e., our results include questions like "Are developers happy?" and "Are clients happy?"

Nebulous questions with unquantifiable metrics like these keep us honest and communicative with our clients and focused on the process of setting reasonable expectations that satisfy all. We stay focused on the people and change the process to ensure results, and expectations, are met.

Results may change from developer to developer, client to client, and week to week! We expect them to change as we make progress on the project.

Re: Measure results, not hours

#83

Post by tehwalrus » Wed, Oct 10, 2012, 8:44 AM UTC

rpwilcox wrote: post #76

tehwalrus wrote: post #72

My old company had this down to a T. First, you only had to complete your EU mandated 37.5 hours per week. If you went over (without a good reason like an urgent project deliverable,) they would ask why you were being inefficient, and if you needed more managerial support or more resource on your team. Second, you had to account for every one of those 37.5 hours against tasks and their estimates - and you often didn'…

It's great that your organization is responsible about it. Sounds like there's a great deal of trust in your organization. It sounds like there are numerous ways for this to go badly - ie: when it gets noticed that you went over 37.5 hours in some organizations that might start to be a blame game, or you'd start getting requests to "we need it done, but we also need you to do it off the clock so we don't get into tro…

just to briefly defend the EU - the 37.5 hour mandate is how much a contract can oblige you to work, not how much work you can actually do. That was, more controversially, recently capped at 60 hours per week or something, which was a massive problem for medical students/interns who wanted to qualify in less than 10 years.

Back to the company, by the time I left the culture had morphed a bit, and people were encouraged to work extra hours to compensate for their slip, where necessary. Still much better than (what I hear of) the US, where stupidly long hours are expected (apparently).

Re: Measure results, not hours

#84

Post by donw » Wed, Oct 10, 2012, 10:13 PM 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.

My clients get billed for the time I spend improving their business, not for the time I spend on Hacker News.