November 14, 2008 at 6:28 am
Andy Warren (11/14/2008)
It's easy as an employee to say that you don't want to be measure on hours of productivity but only on tasks completed. The problem with that is that in general you're paid based on hours. Imagine hiring a plumber at $75/hour and watching them stop to answer a few instant messages, or knock out a blog post because they just learned something really cool while fixing your problem. Would you have a problemw with that? Yeah! On the other hand, if you were paying them a flat fee to fix it, you'd be a lot more tolerant of the time it took to get done, other than if it turned into all day and you had to sit there with them.
Interesting scenario Andy, but for those of us on salary, we ARE paid a flat fee, it's just per annum. If we get a project that REQUIRES extra hours to get it done due to a deadline/urgency/whatever, then the expectation is that because we're salaried we will do what we need to in order to perform our job (with no extra compensation). If it takes 7 hours on Friday and we decide to take a longer lunch because we've been working hard, there is a (little) leeway there, as long as we're not abusing it.
Personally, if the guy fixing my crapper wants to take a minute to answer the phone/send a text message as opposed to leaving me stranded with a full bowel and no place to put it, I'll kiss his @$$ every time.
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November 14, 2008 at 6:39 am
I find it hard to quantify what is "productive". Is answering a question on SSC productive? The short-term answer is probably "No", but long-term I would say, "Yes". Mainly because I consider time on SSC as professional development and because, as an SSC regular, I have built some relationships, granted mostly virtual, with some very competent people who I am now comfortable asking for help directly which has helped me accomplish some more difficult tasks that I had been stuggling with.
In all honesty most days are around 5 productive hours with some days close to 8. I am very task oriented, which I think most DBA's and developers are, and if I don't have a specific task that needs to be done, an "A" or "B", in blandry's post, my mind will wander.
So if you bring me in for some work, make sure you have enough for me to do:D
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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November 14, 2008 at 6:41 am
Focus is my problem. I am a hardworker and enjoy my work thoroughly. I set targets for myself as to what I want to achieve for the day. I also set targets for what I want to learn and when my job is done I will surf the net in search of what I need to learn. Sometimes I come upon something that I have been loking for previously or I will see something I know will help me tremendously and then my focus is gone from what I set out to do from the start.
Talking about how many hours a person work in a day. What about doing 10 hours' work in 8 or 7 hours. Sometimes there just is no time for idle chit-chat and a person has to grind. Yes, I would think an average day I would get about 6-7 hours in and sometimes even less.
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November 14, 2008 at 6:50 am
Jack, I'd argue that time spent on SSC is productive, but it's not the 'real' work that I'd count towards my goal of 6.5 hours a day. As a manager/employer I need my team to stay current and I have no problem with budgeting some time for that - in fact I have, as some portion of that other 1.5 hours a day.
If you don't have anything to do, spending time here is better than reading the newspaper, but as a manage/employer I'd prefer that you found a way to reinvest that time back into the business - automating a process that you'd otherwise do manually, test your backup, update your documentation and data dictionary, etc. Not busy work, just the work that is most commonly deferred and deferred again.
Of course, if you're trying to solve an active problem, then time here or elsewhere then goes into the real work bucket.
November 14, 2008 at 6:53 am
Jcrawf,
I wouldnt sweat the plumber taking a 5 minute call either. There's some slack required on any job, that's why I shoot for the 6-7 hours of real/primary work as a goal. I know we're all salaried and I don't agree with it, but that's the way the world works right now. Nonetheless, I'd argue that your salary was based on some average number of hours total, and an expectation that x % of them would be attributed to things of immediate importance to the business.
November 14, 2008 at 6:54 am
I have to say that in the worst day - maybe 1 hour or least, in the best day - no minute, extra half of hour 😉
Rest of time, reading and learning, preparing to be the best in the heavy hours. Because business likes to have quickly responses.
So, my work day is stylized as "in waves" pieces of hard work.
November 14, 2008 at 7:01 am
Years ago I had a military supervisor that told me if he got 3 things accomplished during the day he thought he had a good day.
I thought this was ridiculous until I became a supervisor. My favorite saying then became "Some days you measure progress in milimeters..."
One thing I have learned over the years that really improved the productivity of my direct reports was to schedule a "no phone" hour twice a day. That meant no calls out, and no answering incoming calls.
If possible incoming calls were directed to someone else to take a message that could be passed along. If not possible, then it went into voice mail.
It is amazing how much productivity improved as a result of those scheduled "quite times."
Thanks, Bobw
November 14, 2008 at 7:07 am
In terms of productivity, as a manager, the measure of my productivity is in how effective I am in facilitating my direct reports ability and desire to be productive.
Although it's true that a certain portion of a person's productivity quotient is outside the manager's direct circle of influence, as leaders, it's our responsibility to make sure we have reduced all obstacles to the maximum of our capabilities towards insuring that our reports have not only the tools to do their jobs but the thorough understanding of what those tasks are.
A large part of my job is "expectation management" upstream and downstream. With that said, productivity's quantification is relative to the expectations I manage.
I am a firm believer of "Surround yourself with people possessing a passion for what they do and who genuinely want to do it well and then let them do what they want" with the right team, this philosophy has moved mountains.
November 14, 2008 at 7:17 am
Somedays 2 hours, somedays 10 hours, of what 'I' think I should be doing. I am the manager, programmer, dBA, Helpdesk, ...etc. So it varies. Everyday I go home confident I earned my pay, because everyday I have done the most important work.
The day's I have to talk myself into feeling like that are the day's I research solutions. When I just sit and read or get out on the web sites looking for a solution without finding it are the day's I am crabby and leave thinking I wasted a day.
I do get the satifaction of seeing that research pay off from time to time. I am surprized by a solution that seems to come from nowhere because a month ago I read about it and it stuck. I do have this fear that I will stop learning and using new things. (getting old) It hasn't happened yet.
November 14, 2008 at 7:19 am
Hey Steve,
Thank you for posting this poll.
There are so many people I wanted to quote here and I probably will refer back to this page often for so many of the insights I've seen.
I think many folks here make some really excellent points many of which apply to me as well, but I won't regurgitate them if I can help it.
I wanted to add a few things that I have experienced.
Organization can make a serious difference. Sometimes I have so many priorities coming at me at once that it is simply impossible to finish them all in time. I have often been in situations where I have been told to work on X as it is our number 1 priority. I would work on the project diligently and sometimes get near completion only to be told that it is no longer a priority and get pushed to now work on Y which is the priority of the day. Sometimes, even before I'm finished with Y, I get told, that now Z is important. So what about X and Y, weren't they important? They never got finished. I may have had 6-8 hour productive days, but all the work was worthless if it was abandoned. Additionally, I now find myself stressed that I have had at least 2 (or likely more) unfinished, high priority tasks. This sometimes leads to a sense of failure that costs in terms of productivity. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has experienced the "treadmill" effect where it seems as if I am running really hard, but getting absolutely nowhere.
A few more things.
First, When I am working on something that I really love doing, I often complete that work faster and with much higher quality than work that is not high on my list.
Talent also counts. There are times when I have easily accomplished in minutes what colleagues and coworkers have spent hours or days working on. Sometimes this is due simply to an affinity I have for the work and other times it is because I happen to have knowledge that those others didn't have. Of course, there are also times when I have managed to really complicate some very simple tasks.
Finally, I also wanted to talk about balancing the team. I was in a team once where I felt that one of the members was a bit of a slacker. The person generally only did what they were told and if they weren't given an assignment, they would go web surfing or do other things. I had been raised on the concept of taking initiative, so to me, this seemed really lazy. However, when I was no longer part of that team, I realized what I had lost. I am very good at coming up with solutions to problems, but I am not a particularly quick coder. I can get distracted by the minutiae of coding and best practices and it seems like I'm constantly finding new problems while I am in the process of solving current ones. These distractions can slow me down significantly at times. This other person did not have these distractions. I could show the person how to do something and they would do it and do it quickly. As a team, we cranked out code way more rapidly than I am able to now.
So, I think when it comes to scheduling, it really comes down to knowing your team. Knowing their strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes and pairing them with the right jobs as much as possible. It also takes good communication. If someone has a major life event, for instance, that can be really distracting. It would be good to know about these things when scheduling.
Someone I respect once said, "All estimates are wrong". I think once we get over that, it really comes down to just making our best guess based on our experience.
November 14, 2008 at 7:44 am
I am not exactly sure how you are measuring productivity. One of my responsibilities as a Senior Corporate DBA is to assist the DBAs working in various business components and consult with them on the best ways to do various tasks. Therefore, I do a lot of reading and studying on various sites and online magazines for information on new ideas and ways to resolve problems. I consider this part of my job to be well informed and am being productive when I am gathering information. If I can save a team member several hours by supplying information to them then I am very productive even though I did produce a concrete deliverable.
November 14, 2008 at 7:48 am
Andy Warren (11/14/2008)
Jack, I'd argue that time spent on SSC is productive, but it's not the 'real' work that I'd count towards my goal of 6.5 hours a day. As a manager/employer I need my team to stay current and I have no problem with budgeting some time for that - in fact I have, as some portion of that other 1.5 hours a day.If you don't have anything to do, spending time here is better than reading the newspaper, but as a manage/employer I'd prefer that you found a way to reinvest that time back into the business - automating a process that you'd otherwise do manually, test your backup, update your documentation and data dictionary, etc. Not busy work, just the work that is most commonly deferred and deferred again.
Of course, if you're trying to solve an active problem, then time here or elsewhere then goes into the real work bucket.
Andy,
I can't disagree. Ideally an employee should be busy doing something that brings value to the employer the entire time at the office. I can rationalize/justify just about any behavior, but that does not make it right.
The reason work is deferred is because it is unpleasant. Who wants to document? :hehe:
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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November 14, 2008 at 7:48 am
Having just finished reading the book "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It" (ISBN: 978-1-59184-203-3) your poll is quite timely. For most of my working life I've believed that you should get paid for results, not for hours spent on the task.
The problem in my current environment is that we have to report exactly how we spent our time each day. It's not enough to just put in the hours, we're now (as of late 2007) on a system where we bill our time against projects we worked on. The problem with this, in my opinion, is that all of our projects are for the employees of the company. You see, we don't sell software to anyone, we just build software for our employees to use.
As you can imagine, this system encourages everyone to lie about how they spent their time.
Now I understand that when putting together bids for projects that you have to have some way of determining how much it should cost and calculating time spent is presently the only reasonable way to do it. But that doesn't mean when you say it will take 2.3 days to build a piece of code that you should have to account for those 2.3 days. If it takes you 1.4 days then you should be able to take a break for 0.9. But if it takes you 3.7 you don't get paid for the extra 0.6.
The auto repair industry has been doing this for years. They have charts that say how long it takes to replace the water pump on your car (1.6 hours) and that's what they bill you for. If it takes them only an hour they still get paid for 1.6, but if the novice guy takes 2.6 you, the customer, don't pay extra.
The most equitable paying job I ever had was back in 1986. I had a 3rd shift job where I was supposed to complete a certain task by 8am. I got paid for 8 hours of work whether I worked 4 or 10. Even though it paid only $6/hr I was thrilled when I could get the job done by 6:30 because that meant my hourly rate went up. Believe me, more often than not I was done by that time. In reality the company was paying me $48 a night to do the job. The only reason for the hourly rate was because of Department of Labor standards.
Put me in the camp who believes that work is something you do, not a place you go.
November 14, 2008 at 7:52 am
They tell me that I spend 59.28% ytd of my time on 'Discretionary Investment Work', which translates to 'actual useful work'. The target is 35% - 40%, so they fully expect (plan) 60 - 65% of our time to be wasted. I surpassed my metric and so expect to get my bonus. They don't really know what a DBA does, and they don't really care as long as the numbers are good and no one is complaining about the databases. This is out of an expected 9 hour day, 5 days a week.
No good deed goes unpunished.
November 14, 2008 at 8:11 am
You want to talk about distractions? Try working from home 😛
I work as a one man developer/DBA to a company who has absolutely no on site I.T. department, they outsource everything. I get paid per project, not by salary, so how much actual work I get done in a day is something I'm keenly interested in as it determines the profitability of everything I do.
I try to put in what I call 4 "hard" hours every day, meaning 100% work with no phone calls, no breaks, no trips to the bathroom, etc. I find 4 hours of 100% full-out work is equivalent to the 8 hours I used to put in when I was on salary and didn't pay very close attention to how efficiently I worked. So I work 4 hours a day and I charge what I used to get paid for working 8 hours, but still my quotes are very competitive and my projects usually get done well within their deadlines.
I used to try and work 8 "hard" hours a day, but it was very hard to stay motivated and productive as I never felt I could live up to what seemed like it should be a modest expectation. Never have I needed more time off, sick days, mental health days, etc. then when I tried to be 100% efficient all of the time, and in the end I got less work done then when I set the more modest 4 hour goal.
Thanks for bringing this up Steve. As someone who works alone and wrestles with this problem all the time, I'm relieved to see so many people struggle with the same issue.
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