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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve recently started a job where my time isn’t measured. My time was measure 2012 until 2018. 3 different jobs. Utter misery. Now I’m having a lot more fun and feel very productive in the true sense of the word. There is still stand ups and slack etc. but I don’t mind that so much. Having a stopwatch constantly ticking against you is the main hell I hate in modern tech culture.

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Did you have time budgets or quotas? I’m curious how these companies used the measured time, what made it feel so oppressive. (I have no doubt it feels oppressive, just interested in the details.)

When I’ve done contract work, and when I ran a startup, I started tracking my own time. I find it helps me focus and account for my time and understand my own habits. It’s not very good for open problems or exploratory work, other than to find that they take a lot of time. ;)

Other than tracking myself, I’ve never had a job that measured my time directly. I had one job that did measure when employees were at work, but they didn’t show it to employees nor set any quotas, they just wanted to understand work patterns.

It’s more of a case of being dragged into a room to discuss why task X and take Y took 6 hours instreas of 2, or 4 weeks instead of $what-manager-coulda-dunnit-back-in-the-day. At those companies I had to let a lot of shit go through code reviews and take shortcuts. That stuff wasn’t measured.

Ah, thank you. Sounds not very fun. May your new company celebrate goals accomplished in years rather than worry about tasks not accomplished in hours.

Were you working for Crossover or similar?

(not OP) it seems to me it is now "normal" for remote companies to track every second; is it really as soulcrushing as it sounds? Do you have any real world experience with crossover? (I am seriously considering applying with them)

Isn’t Crossover a scam of some sort?

Nope not worked for any famous companies.

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