Any devs have to track their time down to 15 minute increments? Do you get used to it? Does it fuck with your flow? Any tools to use to make it easier?

Lots of task managers (such as Kira, Redmine, Trac, etc) have time tracking plugins. If, like me you don't have the permissions to install them, you can download timetracking apps. I personally use a pomodoro app at my job to keep track of the time I work and my breaks.

I fought my last company every step of the way when they tried to instate this. I just flat-out refused and made my feelings very clear. They didn't pressure me too much into it, but made all the juniors do it anyway. I ended up leaving that company shortly thereafter. #seniordev

@devios1 I really do feel it's demeaning just a waste of brain power.

@epiz Yeah if there's one thing I can't stand it's people being treated like cattle. Now if managers had to log every 15 minutes of their days too maybe it would be fair, but I'm guessing that probably doesn't apply to them, does it?

Not anymore! Getting fired from that kind of place can be the best thing to happen to you :-)

Well it turns out I accepted another job as of an hour ago but I think they will be tracking along the same lines :/ I kind of get a fuck it attitude though and don't stress about accuracy.

Had to do this at my last job (then, around December since accounting took off early, they made us "estimate" times for almost the entire month).
Tool I used: magical bullshit. Unless they force you to comment timestamps into your code, just make it up. Your neurons are better used writing code than mapping your time.

@mhudson That was my argument exactly. You're an idiot if you believe the numbers are going to be in any way accurate, and therefore an idiot for making people waste their time and brain power on something so worthless in the first place when they actually have better things to be doing. But it's worse than worthless, it's demeaning. It's like saying "I don't trust you to manage your time without having to log every minute of it, so do this so I can keep an ever present eye on you." To me it's just so degrading and demoralizing I can't believe places do this. Being a programmer is an intellectual profession. You can't just—

…I should probably just start my own rant at this point probably. 😄

Why? Don't you guys use solutions like jira? MS team services?? Aren't your tasks logged over there with a due date? They can see what you finished on a given day who the fuck cares about amount of time spent if progress is moving as planned 😒

@gitpush We use git hub and they have a do project/task/ticket management through the system but I guess because it has a time tracking functionality they feel the MUST use it. puke.

@gitpush My last company used Jira for all the tracking. They had 5 different special time-tracking tickets they'd set up for various "administrative" tasks. You were supposed to account for every hour of your day in 15-minute increments in one of the 5 tickets *in addition to* everything you were still logging in Jira normally. It was just so absurd. And last I heard they were still doing it too.

@devios1 damn that's messed up :/

@epiz we used to use gitlab local deployment before bitbucket but at that time we used Asana, at least it had tasks listed and management cared about getting them done rather than what we are doing as seconds pass by...

At my job, it's critical because we do software maintenance and it's the metric used to bill clients.. I think that it's great if you want to properly manage SLAs.

@letmecode that kind of model works well when you are protecting your own time and value. In my case I have to justify my time/value if I spend too much in one area and also not over bill the company and it is really stressful. Yes, I know the company is trying to protect /their/ time and value but going down to the 15 minute increment and not affording a level of trust to the professionals they hire to complete their work based on deadlines and goals instead of time spent is demeaning.

@devios1 That sounds like the bullshit we are having to deal with now. I feel compelled to make my days add up to 8 hours and my weeks 40 or else I will have a magnifying glass on how I spend my time. It makes me feel like if I am not fucking producing every minute of every day I will become a liability or expendable to the company. It's de-humanizing.

@gitpush Yeah, and right now my company is in "reactive" mode so I either have to wait for tickets or beg for tasks - we aren't in any kind of stable cycle so the waiting time gets tracked as admin or whatever and then the company makes comments like "seeing too much admin time". Fuuuu

@paulwillyjean I think that's great to track time to projects/tasks/clients but it's the other time that doesn't fit into one of those areas that frustrates me. Especially since my company hasn't had and SLA until literally today.