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I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

simonberens.me

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Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#301

Post by safety1st »

sberens wrote: post #114
chrisandchris wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, it's quite obvious where the "productivity" goes: > In the morning session, I did yoga, went to the gym, started two blog posts, and did some work for my job. If it's the 5th you mention, it's just not that important?

My desire to increase my productivity was not solely (or largely) driven by doing better at my job; I find it's relatively easy to be productive if you go into the office. I mainly wanted to get a lot of side projects/hobbies done.

I'll just leave this here - when remote/junior contractors have a focus issue we simply require them to use software which screenshots their desktop at random intervals during work hours. This usually revolves the issue, if it doesn't, we start actually looking at the screenshots from time to time and providing feedback.

It's a cheap and simple solution to the problem of people spending half their work hours puttering around on Twitter etc.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#302

Post by tryauuum »

sph wrote: post #290
tryauuum wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

holy fuck it's smart

I mean... to each their own.

If you want to attract the kind of girl who doesn't mind to fill a google form to get a date, that's the best course of action

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#303

Post by bigbillheck »

safety1st wrote: post #301
sberens wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My desire to increase my productivity was not solely (or largely) driven by doing better at my job; I find it's relatively easy to be productive if you go into the office. I mainly wanted to get a lot of side projects/hobbies done.

I'll just leave this here - when remote/junior contractors have a focus issue we simply require them to use software which screenshots their desktop at random intervals during work hours. This usually revolves the issue, if it doesn't, we start actually looking at the screenshots from time to time and providing feedback. It's a cheap and simple solution to the problem of people spending half their work hours putterin…

> we simply require them to use software which screenshots their desktop at random intervals during work hours

What a horrible thing to do.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#304

Post by Sakos »

jonathanyc wrote: post #88
Sakos wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more confused by these comments. Like, he's 21. This is an interesting experience and a great story to tell. Sounds like money well-spent and I'm glad he's experimenting in unusual ways. That's what makes life interesting and worth living. Some of my most memorable and valuable memories stem from bad decisions or experimenting with different ideas that might be dumb. Some of you need to touch grass.

Alice thinks it's odd that Bob budgeted $10k/mo to hire proxy moms to check in on him & cook for him. Do you tell Alice to touch grass?

There's a difference between "Alice thinks it's odd" and the degree of disparaging criticism I'm seeing here. I'm really disappointed by the quality of discussion on this post.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#305

Post by Sakos »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #77
Sakos wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more confused by these comments. Like, he's 21. This is an interesting experience and a great story to tell. Sounds like money well-spent and I'm glad he's experimenting in unusual ways. That's what makes life interesting and worth living. Some of my most memorable and valuable memories stem from bad decisions or experimenting with different ideas that might be dumb. Some of you need to touch grass.

This man is insane. He'd rather oppress himself at great expense than spend any time at all actually thinking about where his problems come from (and why its so important to him to "all work and no play"). Perhaps there's a reason "touch grass" is on the tip of your tongue.

> Perhaps there's a reason "touch grass" is on the tip of your tongue.

You mean aside from the fact that people are insulting this guy for trying something that doesn't hurt anybody or affect anybody else? You just called him insane. For what exactly? And why do you think that's okay for you to do?

Touch grass, bro.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#306

Post by chrisandchris »

bigbillheck wrote: post #303
safety1st wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just leave this here - when remote/junior contractors have a focus issue we simply require them to use software which screenshots their desktop at random intervals during work hours. This usually revolves the issue, if it doesn't, we start actually looking at the screenshots from time to time and providing feedback. It's a cheap and simple solution to the problem of people spending half their work hours putterin…

> we simply require them to use software which screenshots their desktop at random intervals during work hours What a horrible thing to do.

I'm all against employee surveillance but I actually would take part in that for several reasons:

- It's business devices, so there should be no private stuff in any of the screenshots. - It's screenshots, so it's just a point-in-time. There's no way to determine how long a sequence was. For both sides. - The rule seems to be that it should just set boundaries. There's no proactive monitoring. They only seem to look at the screenshots if productivity does not raise.

Obviously, lower intervalls may be problematic. If there are maybe 15-30 screenshots a day, I don't see any issue (for me).

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#307

Post by thdespou »

tacotacotaco wrote: post #130
12345hn6789 wrote: post #29

I honestly cannot believe this. The porn part, the make me a smoothie request, dating dinners. This guy seriously paid people to sit behind him and didn't even think about them stealing his $1000 monitors until after the fact? He didn't try blocking any non productive sites? No productivity software? No pomadoro technique-esq focus methods? This guy should have paid $88/hour for therapy if we are being honest here

Maybe I’m too cynical but it just seems performative. It seems like any number of YouTube videos where some financially well off influencer spends their money doing something awkward to attract views. And it worked. Here we are gawking at the latest stunt. Like and subscribe. Don’t forget to smash that bell. Check out my patreon for access to my Discord.

The only thing missing is a clickbaity thumbnail.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#309

Post by thdespou »

moconnor wrote: post #203

INFO: did you make them sit on that hard wooden chair for eight hours and watch you recline in your aeron? But seriously: are your graphs showing 21 productive hours a week? That’s like four a day? What _are_ you doing the rest of the time? As someone else said: therapy would be an incredible productivity investment. Sharpen the saw. Babysitters are a hack for the symptoms, it’s long term more efficient to attack the…

I think his employer at Meta would be furious right now for letting this guy jerk off for 4 hours every day when he was supposed to be going fast and be breaking things.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#310

Post by safety1st »

bigbillheck wrote: post #303
safety1st wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just leave this here - when remote/junior contractors have a focus issue we simply require them to use software which screenshots their desktop at random intervals during work hours. This usually revolves the issue, if it doesn't, we start actually looking at the screenshots from time to time and providing feedback. It's a cheap and simple solution to the problem of people spending half their work hours putterin…

> we simply require them to use software which screenshots their desktop at random intervals during work hours What a horrible thing to do.

No. It's completely justified, humane and good when you have a contractor or employee who's dicking around, failing to meet expectations and the alternative is termination.

That's when we use it. Some people need to have discipline imposed from an external source, if they don't have it, they will fail.

If they turn their performance around they can ask to have it removed and we usually grant the ask. I don't have anyone senior on my team who has to use this system, because part of becoming senior is developing the discipline to not need this.

We give freedom to those who perform and explicit, direct, unambiguous corrective guidance to those who don't.

It's frankly a great system at the right time and place. I thought the OP's post was very interesting because being watched improves output for many people. Managers like having people in the office for this reason, too. But the OP's way of having himself watched was very expensive. You can do it for 15 bucks a month with a SaaS. The most interesting part is that performance usually improves even if no one is looking at the screenshot. This is an awful lot more relaxing than having someone hover over your shoulder all day, whether they're a manager or a person you hired.

Thanks for making the effort to judge us with zero context and six words though.

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