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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

I've not seen anything as extreme as people in the streets, but regularly have seen employee pushback about erp system implementations, e.g. SAP. These enterprise systems are are all on the back of employees, by which I mean they are forced to take the extra time to use them while they are extremely unfriendly to the user - because they are bought by execs, and their value is not at all apparent to those who use then.

A simple example, imagine you told employees they now had to log their time and account for each 15 minutes, and do so through some kind of java.swing interface from the 90s that routinely screwed up, and they don't get any extra time to do so, and they're already busy. Now multiply that by whatever other silly management tasks they want you to use the tool for. You'd be pissed off too

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My significant other spends the last hour of her day just recapitulating and filling timesheets. Nothing else. I eat the bad moods this brings every day.

What a waste, 4 different stakeholders need their own timesheets filled EXCEPT for her actual direct boss. Yes, she works for TCS, how did you know?

Until the last sentence I was thinking “go build em a saas!”

The software primarily serves its real customers, the executives who subject others to using the software. Seems like every field is taken over by these annoying products nowadays, which basically try to eliminate some employees and distribute the work to other employees (of course the software claims to mostly eliminate the work).

As for the 15-minute logging requirement, that may actually be part of it, cynically. Since they are cloud-based they can track every click, plus constantly time out and require you to log in again all day.

Also compliance. Some other company implements every regulation that gets dreamed up.

> imagine you told employees they now had to log their time and account for each 15 minutes

You don't need to imagine, this is becoming (if it is not already) the norm for salaried employees. Maybe not to the 15 minutes, but hourly accounting is very widespread.

That said, the joke is on the c-suite in this case - almost everyone makes it up, or at least guestimates heavily.

The log yer time jobs are definitely the worst. It is no longer engineering or team work but “how can I log as little time on this and move it along”. Whenever I refactored or took time to do something properly I would regret it because I get taken to task for the time it took. So fuck that. Will never enter a time again! Fire me if you have to.

It seems very funny until you get investigated and fired for reporting made-up hours. I've seen it used as universal "we need to fire you ASAP" tool, since as you say everybody does it.

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