Slashdot Mirror
Data-Crunching Could Kill Your Downtime At Work
An anonymous reader writes: How many of you are reading this at work? One of the unspoken perks of many white collar jobs is that you can waste time while still appearing productive. Workplaces are aware that this goes on, and they police it to some extent by blocking Facebook or simply looking over your shoulder — but there's only so much they can do. The new generation of workplace analytics software is starting to change that. "Employers of all types — old-line manufacturers, nonprofits, universities, digital start-ups and retailers — are using an increasingly wide range of tools to monitor workers' efforts, help them focus, cheer them on and just make sure they show up on time." This inevitably leads to the question: does cracking the whip more often actually increase productivity? To hear the makers of this software tell it, the value is almost limitless, and it will never be misused to micromanage your job. But the article lacks any independent support for that idea, and I'm sure many of you could provide examples where time-keeping software has only been a hindrance.
I worked central IT in a State Government job and we had a category in the time tracking system called "Time spent filling out timesheet" .. we were allowed to bill ~4hrs per month to it.
.. the beancounters don't seem to care what you waste time on it, so long as it has a label.
Curiously they didn't have any problem with this
That guy in India is scamming you by billing you while working on his second, more interesting, job.