Who come out with this idea?

Do you do job shit job sheet?

In my career profession, I came across some companies who demanded me to fill up the job sheet. It is a spreadsheet reports the details of tasks you have done hourly through out the day. Started when I was working as a contract in some companies a decade ago and also a small company where I work as a fulltime, this culture is still exist until today in my country.

Is this idea also happen in other countries?

Why do some people (probably management or finance department) think as software developer, we need to do this?

Does this apply to other occupation? As a drawing artist, a restaurant chef, a car engineer ? Does someone need to log their work so he/she can justify he is getting paid for 8 hours of work per day? (maybe I need to write an automated tweet app to post in my twitter)

Alright, I can accept that in my previous jobs, I didn't say "No" to them. But today, I am working as a freelancer, the client asks me to send a job sheet to them. I already sent an Invoice and tickets summary of what I already done.

Do you think this is acceptable? I regret I offer a very low rate to them. I think I should quit.

If you want to force your employee to quit, this might be a good idea.

aeric said:

Do you think this is acceptable?

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Not even a little bit.

I read this last week.
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-th...st-surf-the-internet-for-the-rest-of-the-day?

I always wondered how a salesman do his job? Does he sit in front of his computer all day long or go out to meet his customers or leads all day long? Does he ever stuck in traffic? Does he check emails and handling customers complaints through phone in a coffee shop?
Does company like the one who make cold calls to 1000 of customers daily to get $1000 sales or the one just get the $1million sales but this person doesn't seem to do work but surf the internet all day long?

aeric said:

I read this last week.
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-th...st-surf-the-internet-for-the-rest-of-the-day?

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Surfing the internet is a part of a programmers job. Where else are we gonna cut and paste code from?

Seriously aeric, I think asking for an hourly job sheet from a freelancer is rank amateur, demonstrates severe lack of trust and tells me there'll be more trouble down the road.

I think I'd be putting my managers hat on and telling them they can expect the usual weekly progress report and if that doesnt suit, we can part company here and now.

I just want to add one thing. What MikeH wrote is the correct solution, but I know from your previous threads that you might have a strained financial situation at the moment. That obviously affect things, and how you should move forward. If you really really need this work, you might need to keep them happy.

Two notes on providing them with a time-sheet:

1. It doesn't need to be very accurate. It's not like they can verify what you've done and how long it took
2. If they decide they're unhappy with the end result, they will likely use the time-sheet against you in some way to withhold (part of) payment

So, in short: Be careful.

(Also try to save up money so for future situations like this you can kindly decline to continue work on the project.)

Job sheets are sometimes necessary and justified for recording and accounting reasons.

As an hourly paid agency worker for a very large company my partner used to submit a job sheet of hours worked and on what with her invoice. This allowed the company to allocate the expense to the correct departmental budget.

When I managed a software and hardware team I wanted hourly job sheets for the same reasons. If we had several different jobs on the go at once it again was necessary to book the time and cost against each particular contract.

I have never actually employed a freelancer but I have worked as one. A job sheet might or might not be necessary for a freelancer depending upon the terms of the contract and the type of job.

When you are employer or have contract in other company... you are following the rules...

But when you are the boss of yourself... you set the rules for others want to work with you! But when it comes the relationship you<->customer, you must make him to feel safe and explain them what, how, when... can be a pre-defined jobsheet-document... with no so much detail, that will cover more -> you and a little the customer...

But remember you can set the rules... These rules, can make your future client run away or be with you forever...

Be honest... be yourself... From the other hand, select your customers if you can, if you have the "luxury"...

Why do some people (probably management or finance department) think as software developer, we need to do this?

Click to expand...

It sounds like someone just completed his/her Project Management course..

I used to work for a large company years ago. At some point they paid for a good PM course for some of us serving as Project Leaders on important company projects.
Then they put together a study group to discuss how to apply some new "company rules".

Among the proposed ones there was the analytical time-sheet.
Having worked as a programmer before, I strongly opposed that idea (as long as call the personnel a "resource", like a photocopier or a room..bleah).
Two factors immediately emerged:
- if the company wants us to compile it, then 30 minutes a day goes for that task (i.e. 30 minutes subtracted to productive work)
- they want to control us (this wasn't true, but it's how they perceived the new rule). So, no more extra time; stay defensive; do just and only what explicity asked..

The cherry on the cake was something really absurd (read on).
As PLs we referred to Area Directors. They assigned us projects, budgets and time constraints (which they already discussed and agreed with customers, mostly ignoring the real needed efforts).
A PL could also act as PM for small projects or have a team of PMs when the assigned project was large enough.
Anyway, the PM (among other things) had to assign tasks to "resources", define the time constraints for each task and supervise the overall project to stay in time and budget.

A simple question: how a PM could determine the time needed to complete a task if he/she has no notion of the work involved?
In my case, having worked as a programmer, I was able to estimate the needed time with some precision. But what about the other PMs?
Well, since their goal was to look efficient to their Director, they often simply used absurd completion time for most tasks..

You can easily understand the chaos (insurrection) that generated.
How they (the directors) solved it? Have the "resource" and the PM negotiate for each task duration. When in conflict the PM word was the last one..

Now, put together the time-sheet and the negotiation. Does it surprise you if a "resource" always tried to estimate a task a lot longer than necessary? At least when working with some PMs? Can you really call this dishonesty rather than a form of self safety?

So, @aeric , a few points you may want to consider:
- add the time for the time-sheet compilation to your list of daily activities
- when you solve a task in a very short time, than record what you feel is the time someone less skilled than you would have taken
- phone calls, reports, meetings and even research should be part of your time-sheet

At some point they may ask you to switch to a "milestones completed" approach. That's good since you won't have to report about any single minute of your day. But remember that the initial "project kick-off" should have a price tag on it. I mean, they have to pay an initial amount just because you accept the project.
It's a way to remunerate the fact you're devoting yourself to that project instead of any other. They pay for your commitment.

Sandman said:

It doesn't need to be very accurate. It's not like they can verify what you've done and how long it took

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After I raised my concern then they agreed to accept the summary of log cases I have done. They actually happy with my timely fixes. Good news is I received my payment and I just released the updated APK and source code.

aeric I think all developer has this problems. I'm starting to read this book and talk about this problem and show many solutions.

Reminds me of this and many stories like it;

When I worked for a company, I was asked to write down everything I did during the day, whatever I was programming, fixing, attending a client on the phone, etc.
But they didn't use it to control us workers, but to know what work had been done for a client, which client called most often and was attended to for the longest, etc.
And it was used to charge more or less in the maintenance fee to the client.
A customer who never calls and does not bother, is charged less. A customer who calls every day, even for unimportant things, is charged more.
Of course, when I am self-employed (for more than 12 years now) none of my clients can demand that I deliver a list of what I do. And if he asks me to do so, I say "of course I won't do that".

vecino said:

And if he asks me to do so, I say "of course I won't do that".

Click to expand...

It's so good to be your own boss and set your own rules.

vecino said:

When I worked for a company, I was asked to write down everything I did during the day, whatever I was programming, fixing, attending a client on the phone, etc.
But they didn't use it to control us workers, but to know what work had been done for a client, which client called most often and was attended to for the longest, etc.
And it was used to charge more or less in the maintenance fee to the client.
A customer who never calls and does not bother, is charged less. A customer who calls every day, even for unimportant things, is charged more.
Of course, when I am self-employed (for more than 12 years now) none of my clients can demand that I deliver a list of what I do. And if he asks me to do so, I say "of course I won't do that".

Click to expand...

This approach can kill two birds with one stone. Employer can have dozens of excuses to make them always right. A ticketing system can measures the customers request and better organize any projects.

After 40 years working in IT systems development for a range of industries, from military real time to consumer products, I have nearly always had to do timesheets. As a manager of 120 people working on 14 different projects across three continents, keeping track of what people are doing and why its always costing more than the budget its a really simple thing to ask people to do and provides good value information especially in terms of reviewing peoples performance.
As a developer I believe in planning my days to be efficient. As part of that process keeping track of activity is routine and keeping a log is nothing other than normal. I keep a simple spreadsheet open in the background and I just add tasks to it and time spent. Not wholly accurate but good enough - I work in 15 min periods. It also servers to keep track of interruptions which are the main cause of low productivity - when you see that you had to take calls from your client four times in a day that were 'just a quick question' that lasted half an hour or more then you have lost a good proportion of the day.
I am not averse to freedom to manage your own time, but the problem is many do not manage their time at all. Especially in the new agile frameworks I have found that people tend to take longer to do larger tasks as they get interrupted more and plan less.
Overall as an employer I see no problem getting people to justify their time spent - if you have ever hired a lawyer then they do this very accurately and with good reason - Time = Money and they are aggressive about it and are very profitable as a result. If you are selling yourself cheap then I can see that you want freedom to manage your own time and not reporting to a client - but why sell cheap? Our skills are vary valuable and better to sell expensive but charge accurately - overall you will win out both financially and with repeat business from satisfied customers

Still good for ideas:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/10/26/evidence-based-scheduling/

labcold said:

but why sell cheap?

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Because the market is cheap here.

I will repeat my story again. I had bad experiences with at least 2 potential customers last year. They had very different expectations than I had. Since I decided to quit my full time job last year, many came to me but none of the projects come to fruition. I guess one reason is they look down on what I capable to do with the expensive quote I offered. What I quoted is actually lower rate than my previous full time job salary but companies see that as a big lump sum of money. Many efforts were spent by me to plan the project management, I even provided full Gantt chart of the project milestones and I successfully made proof of concepts of solution to the problem they had but eventually seems they really have no budget for the projects. I have wasted a lot of time but not being paid anything. Being bad luck for so many times, I don’t want the next project ended the same again so I offer a much lower rate where this round I tried to be less professional in deliverables. This round I don’t want to do free research and study. I only want a simple freelance job based on case basis. Since this round is a maintenance service, if I charge high then customer will ask me to justify why my charge is higher than the development charge. I also being tricked before project started the vendor told me it was a simple app but when I got the source code I realized it is a very complex app with bad practice and deprecated code. Since I never sign any contract with them, I will quit anytime I want.