Slashdot Mirror


They Work Long Hours, But What About Results?

theodp writes "HBS lecturer Robert C. Pozen says it's high time for management to stop emphasizing hours over results. By viewing those employees who come in over the weekend or stay late in the evening as more 'committed' and 'dedicated' to their work, as a UC Davis study showed, managers create a perverse incentive to not be efficient and get work done during normal business hours. 'It's an unfortunate reality that efficiency often goes unrewarded in the workplace,' writes Pozen. 'Focusing on results rather than hours will help you accomplish more at work and leave more time for the rest of your life.'"

12 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. One way to do this... by edibobb · · Score: 4, Funny

    Measure performance based on lines of code put online. That should help efficiency.

    1. Re:One way to do this... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Funny

      Great. Measure productivity by least lines of code written. ;-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    2. Re:One way to do this... by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's more readable than perl and less bug prone than PHP.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:One way to do this... by IceNinjaNine · · Score: 4, Funny

      Great. Measure productivity by least lines of code written. ;-)

      I'm picturing this confluence of side effects, obfuscated C, and monkey patching ending in some sort of miniature black hole that envelopes the Earth.

      Suck that, strangelets! ;)

    4. Re:One way to do this... by DarthBart · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nobody "codes" in Perl. Perl programs are written by eating a bag of alphabet pasta and then chasing it with ipecac.

    5. Re:One way to do this... by xaxa · · Score: 3, Funny

      My alphabet spaghetti only had A-Z. Perl uses the *other* half of ASCII.

  2. Them Harvard guys by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    Them Harvard guys don't miss a thing, do they?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  3. Re:Measuring results by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is notoriously difficult in creative, team efforts such a software development.

    Its not really. Specifications -> result. That does depend on having a manager sufficiently on the ball

    In other words, yes it is.

    Or do you work at that place with nowhere to park your car, because it has a unicorn paddock in front?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. Re:If I don't have a list of jobs to do, by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Funny

    I just go home for the day.

    You are lazy! If you were a committed employee, you'd stay and read Slashdot instead! :-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  5. Re:Measuring results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    It is for those reasons that I, as a manager, hire as many blacks as possible. When you have a lot of blacks on your team, you can intimidate other departments into doing your work for you. You don't even have to ask the other departments explicitly, you just have all of the blacks on your team look really squinty and mean, and at least one of your blacks should menacingly tap his ashy palm with a length of pipe or perhaps a baseball bat. The software industry is dominated by docile, effeminate white men who will dare not cause a stir.

    That's why I hire only the biggest, blackest, meanest, most tatted-up thugs on this side of the train tracks. As President Franklin Roosevelt said, "Speak softly but carry a big pipe."

    -- Ethanol-fueled

  6. Re:One mark of a bad company... by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was actually pretty funny. Our team had cultivated our clients and we were quite profitable. We got bought by this other company with the bonus plan. Pretty much all of us quit within a year.

    At bonus time, one of our more outspoken engineers opened his bonus envelope, marched into the manager's office, slapped it on his desk, and yelled: "What am I supposed to do with this? Take my wife to McDonalds?" I hadn't laughed that hard since.

  7. Re:Measuring results by bosef1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The guys in the unicorn paddock are fine; they just ride the animals in and lock the doors. It's the god-damned leprechaun valet parking attendents that are the problem. Half the time you have like ten "mystery miles" on the car, or a fresh ding in the bumper.