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Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

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Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#32

Post by felipe »

apike wrote: post #29

There's a lot of backlash here against the idea that managers will use this to micro-manage. That's possible, sure. Bad managers will be bad. The reason I'm interested in Peak is that it may be a good tool to implement the "trust, but verify" approach to management. I feel like I under-manage my team (7 people) because I really dislike interrupting people. I generally assume everybody is doing something productive, a…

The key issue is what you just described in your last paragraph. Micro-managing by metrics without thinking in side-effects is actually harmful to the team. There is a reason measuring productivity by LOC is considered a bad practice (which was actually very common in the past).

I completely see the need for metrics, but they are very easy to gather by specialized tools for the job (software engineering, customer service, etc...). It seems that Peak is just a glorified dashboard, and by assuming that the product is actually "automatically tracking work" (referencing their slogan) one would be damaging the team's productivity and morale, and not increasing it.

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#33

Post by felipe »

swalling wrote: post #30
btgeekboy wrote: post #8

So if I spend an hour at my desk with a pen on paper while I sketch out a few pages of notes, designing a new system before I implement it, I'm unproductive? No thanks.

So you take a picture of each sketch, and upload them to Dropbox, perhaps automatically with that "upload photos from my phone to Dropbox by default" feature. It seems to me that one of things this app might enforce is the idea that your work isn't really done until you've documented it and/or shared it. Pushing for measurement of using tools like Dropbox, Gmail, Basecamp, Google Drive, etc. might enforce this ethos.…

> So you take a picture of each sketch, and upload them to Dropbox

You just created an incentive for programmers to draw useless diagrams on paper and upload them on Dropbox just to "score one point".

Sure, we could go on and on suggesting metrics back and forth to minimize this problem, but my point is that metrics must be carefully chosen due to the unintended side-effects that they may cause. Maybe you can use the number of pictures on Dropbox just to get a sense of overall quality, but if you are going to hold individual people accountable using very exact metrics, then they must be chosen very carefully. This tool certainly does not help on that regard.

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#34

Post by timdorr »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #2

If a company I worked at implemented this, and I knew about it, I'd quit. Despite the tagline about nobody liking micromanaging (not to mention being micromanaged), this is software that explicitly encourages micromanaging. None of the metrics they track are directly tied to productivity, they're just ways for managers who don't trust their employees to be Big Brother with fewer uncomfortable personal interactions.

Then you would absolute hate RescueTime: https://www.rescuetime.com/

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#35

Post by aelaguiz »

This is evil but I predict massive success for this product. I actually wonder if companies could start choosing other products they use (such as their CRM) based on how well they integrate with peak.

I remember when I was CTO @ Zynga it was so hard to fire bad engineers. I wish I could have come up with cold hard data to get rid of them. Instead the best I could do was move them around. The company I worked for was broken but perhaps I could have made the good engineers lives slightly easier if I could have dropped the dead weight and filled their seats with other good programmers.

I can see use cases that aren't evil. Of course it's a similar line of reasoning that I'd use against government wiretaps. Even though it can be done for good reasons the temptation to use it for evil is so high that it should not be done.

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#36

Post by kevinconroy »

aelaguiz wrote: post #35

This is evil but I predict massive success for this product. I actually wonder if companies could start choosing other products they use (such as their CRM) based on how well they integrate with peak. I remember when I was CTO @ Zynga it was so hard to fire bad engineers. I wish I could have come up with cold hard data to get rid of them. Instead the best I could do was move them around. The company I worked for was…

The danger with this hard data approach, though, is that you can end up with good engineers who hate to play the numbers game and bad engineers who realize they just need to hit average numbers to save their ass. And clueless HR departments won't know the difference.

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#37

Post by mahyarm »

aelaguiz wrote: post #35

This is evil but I predict massive success for this product. I actually wonder if companies could start choosing other products they use (such as their CRM) based on how well they integrate with peak. I remember when I was CTO @ Zynga it was so hard to fire bad engineers. I wish I could have come up with cold hard data to get rid of them. Instead the best I could do was move them around. The company I worked for was…

I've never been in a managing role, why is it hard to fire bad engineers?

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#38

Post by ericclemmons »

In the right hands (I'm thinking my ow or a PM's), this is great! In the wrong hands (COO, other departments), this is dangerous.

I immediately signed up. There are a lot of one-off tasks that get done that I like to know about so I can award upon the employee's next review, or handle if they go office the weeds.

Disclosure: I have a barely similar project in the works for our PM that may get released publicly, but it's less about the tracking (what most here hate) and more about the scheduling (which I think we all see as valuable).

Re: Peak - keep track of what everyone is working on

#39

Post by RafiqM »

timdorr wrote: post #34
zzzmarcus wrote: post #2

If a company I worked at implemented this, and I knew about it, I'd quit. Despite the tagline about nobody liking micromanaging (not to mention being micromanaged), this is software that explicitly encourages micromanaging. None of the metrics they track are directly tied to productivity, they're just ways for managers who don't trust their employees to be Big Brother with fewer uncomfortable personal interactions.

Then you would absolute hate RescueTime: https://www.rescuetime.com/

I love RescueTime - for myself. I'd absolutely recommend that my employees use it, but with the caveat that I would never ask for the results. They can use it personally to improve their productivity, but it's just not right for someone else to be analysing their reports.
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