Why not just do the time-sheets?
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not, but the thing that bugged me was that it eventually was used against you.
Mgr: "Oh.. well.. I see here you've only put in 38 hours on core projects this last week... this doesn't look too good to others."
Me: "Well, I was actually here in the building for 46 hours, but 8 of those hours were doing some other stuff that there's no timesheet entries for."
Mgr: "Oh... like what?"
Me: "Like answering questions from people in the building that have questions about some of the projects I'm working on - status updates, etc. Apparently you and the other managers aren't updating anyone, and they ask me."
Mgr: "That's not your job."
Me: "So... I should silently ignore them, or give them a canned response to go ask their own dept manager?"
Mgr: "yes. But that didn't take 8 hours last week!"
Me: "I was also doing some research on a couple new debugging tools."
Mgr: "There's no need for that - the senior engineers are making their decision next week about what tool you'll use."
Me: "OK...."
Mgr: "I don't want to see you make a habit of 38 hours a week from now on."
Me: "Ummm... the last 3 months I've been putting in 45-50 hours non-stop, and have been in on some weekends to work with some other people to hit the deadlines."
Mgr: "Yeah, that's great, but 38 hours..."
This is a composite of discussions I've had and colleagues have had with various managers over the years whenever timesheets are involved. YMMV.
EDIT: Thought better of it and changed my message. But I still think your manager is a moron since he's unable to point out the above, and life is too short to work for people like that.
Also... I'm taking it too seriously? Over a 2 month period when, say, 400 hours are logged, but one week 2 hours are not accounted for in a specified (yet unspoken, hint hint, nudge, nudge) manner, and I'm taking it too seriously?
98% main
1% support
0.5% boss' pet task
0.5% other
All they want is for your time sheet to match that because that's what they've paid for. Some managers are smart enough to just tell you that, others (like the one you appear to have) don't like to say it for some reason. They should just automate it because the numbers you plug in are completely static.
It's just double booking, one side put in a "debit" for the project and now you're putting in the "credit" side saying it was paid. No one cares what you actually did because the exact moments you spent on the project shouldn't affect anything (assuming you're not a problem worker).
The places I've been without timesheets have generally been less stressful overall, and I think the 'fit things in to a timesheet' model contributed to that stress (for me and for others).
I used to get stressed about time sheets, same as you. Then I had a manager who told me what they were really for. Since then I always put in the stock work week, broken down how ever it is supposed to be broken down. Regardless of what I actually work. I keep my real hours in a personal spread sheet so I know how much time I'm over or under and actually work from that.
As a side note, this extra time you're working is just time thrown in the trash. No one is going to thank you for it and if everyone else is doing the same thing you wont even get any kind of promotion for it since it's not "above and beyond". I know, I used to work 60+ hours for a company. Up until the day they laid me off.
I understand that it's still unpleasant to deal with that.
Like once, in a sprint that took 5 weeks, the last week was scheduled for bug-fixes / quality assurance. I did nothing for 3 and a half weeks, finished my assignments in 2 days, then for a whole week I just fixed a couple superficial bugs here and there.
Reported time: ~ 170 hours.
EDIT: to expand on this point, the secret is in how you do the initial estimation. Hugely overestimate the small / easy tasks (explain with technical babble if needed) , then underestimate the difficult tasks. So not only will you secure lots of free time, but you'll also be that genius that finishes difficult tasks in 1 hour :-)
Heck, you might even be promoted to management; that's how all the cool kids in management are doing it :)
He did not want dishonesty, but probably would not mind some tweaking in how work activities are categorised in a timesheet.
Once you're assimilated, business decisions that impact your team become an MBA math abstraction to the parent company leadership. Time sheets are BigCo's mechanism for mapping what people to do top-down business objectives. The tops of most BigCo's think they have a strategy, but usually don't.
Also, there is something about timecard software that brings out the worst in enterprise software developers. I have never, ever seen one implemented well. I get to see a lot of them in this job.
If I could upvote that a thousand times I would.
Why o why is this so true? And why hasn't anyone done anything about it?
The problem I believe, is, fundamentally, the need for managers to justify their existence. Whereas other roles in the organization - engineers, salespeople, secretaries - have clear reason for their existence and work they can point to (code written, products sold, paychecks processed) managers do not.
The fact that nobody reads any of these timesheets and that project estimates based on hours are a complete nonsensical fiction are really beside the point. The point is that the very production of this work is taken as proof that the manager, too, is producing valuable work.
In small startups timesheets are irrelevant because everyone has their heads down getting on with the job. Managers exist, but the company can't afford to have people who just "manage". They do other valuable roles - whether technical or sales or office admin. The sign of a company "growing up" is when you suddenly have all these new people you have to report to, with ill-defined titles like "Product Delivery Manager" - and the timesheets.
OK, but why are timesheet programs so badly designed ? The hardest thing in software development is to design something that's ill-defined - in other words, if the purpose of the program is a bad one, it's really hard to build a good program to fulfill that purpose. Simple timekeeping software isn't hard but management have so many nonsensical requirements that the software increases in complexity and correspondingly decreases in usability.
http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/11/23/4827/data-c...
and
http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/11/27/4832/why-ge...
The best software can't be created in a factory assembly line with interchangeable drones.
If you're implying that Yahoo's MO is to acquire companies and convert them into pumping out hum-drum, mediocre software, well, that sounds about right.