HACKER Q&A
📣 throwthislater

How is time tracking done at your work?


I'm currently working at a small agency where time tracking is done using Hubstaff which takes screenshots every 10 minutes. Furthermore, staying inactive for 5-10 minutes, deducts the time logged by the app.

So is this normal for agencies or is the same thing done at other product companies as well?


  👤 muzani Accepted Answer ✓
I've done similar time tracking on myself back when I was freelancing.

First, I found that it dropped productivity massively. One of the documented conditions for flow is "A loss of reflective self-consciousness". When time tracked, even in 30-60 hour, non-screenshot blocks, I'd be unable to get into flow. I'd also feel secure in justifying that I was getting work done, so while the monitor was showing work, the work was not in my head.

Second, screenshots doesn't stop me from procrastinating. I have two PCs at all times and a phone. 3 min build times meant that I had plenty of excuses.

Third, nobody cares, and clients think it's kinda dumb. They don't care if you're working 1 hour or 10. Most people rather pay fixed cost over time based. When untracked, I'd effectively log about half as many hours for the same amount of work. So time tracking ended up arguing that I should be paid half my hourly rates.

I mostly tracked to get more accurate estimates and log productivity (e.g. how much sleep or diet actually affects things). But the act of logging has been so detrimental to productivity that I just avoid it now.


👤 Cypher
We have do estimate on projects with Jira. plan how long we think it'll take then log the time as we go at end of the day. But honestly I'm terrible at it, I always go way over and just make up the log whatever because after a hard day of debugging its the last thing I care about.

Management complains but not much they can do besides deduct money or fire me. And when pay doesn't keep up with inflation then I really couldn't care less.


👤 brudgers
There are business reasons for the approach.

Sometimes those reasons apply, sometimes they don't.

The reasons range from contractually driven such as an external time and materials contract with a customer who will perform an audit at one end of the spectrum to internal org charts where staff are fungible such as the Amazon warehouse.

In both cases the ultimate source is company culture...or rather in all cases (where a company does or doesn't track like that).

Good luck.


👤 beardyw
Sounds appalling. Maybe someone will develop a kind of hat to detect when you even stop thinking about work.

👤 stop50
I record my start time, my end time and the time i needed for breaks into a website from my company. And the current customer only wants the worktime for the work i do for them. your method would also be pretty much illegal here,

👤 marek_leisk2
Given there are 100s of agencies in any major market I'd suggest to find one that values impact over micromanagement.