[thelist] Filling up timesheets - good or bad?
Erika Meyer
meyer at up.edu
Thu Jan 11 17:39:38 CST 2001
>sometimes they want you to keep an up-to-the-minute activity log.
sometimes it's time to look for another job.
>The result was that most of us
>were scared to go to the kitchen or otherwise look like they're not working
>on warp 10 ALL THE TIME.
I absolutely hate this. It is totally counter productive. Ooh, employee
burnout. Paranoia. Oh, that will really help productivity. NOT.
>How many tips do I owe everyone? :)
The important question is, did you properly log the time you spent writing
these posts?
I don't think it's offtopic. We have to work, don't we. We have to manage
projects, don't we. We have to find a way to communicate to non-technical
managers the extent and complexity of our work.
The SF Chronicle has a weekly Sunday section called "Career" that is
fantastic. I might subscribe to the Sunday Chron (up here in Oregon) just
for that. I have learned a lot from those columns... one thing I learned
from that, and from life, is that productivity cannot be balls to the wall
100% all the time... The best ideas probably happen in the space between
planned activities. (time sheets may well be a plot to keep you 'in the box.')
Also, trying to fit people (like webdesigners, who have to do so many
different kinds of work) into rigid charts, molds, trying to make them work
the way you think they should work, trying to make people organize the way
you think they should... is likely to be counter-productive and maybe breed
resentment.
<tip>
Intelligent people don't like to be treated like machines.
</tip>
Erika
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