Nannette Thacker ShiningStar.net

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Nannette Thacker, consultant and owner of Shining Star Services LLC, specializes in development of custom dynamic database driven web applications utilizing ASP.net technologies. Nannette has been developing ASP sites since 1997. Nannette has written numerous articles on web development techniques and tutorials.

Nannette is the owner and developer of ChristianSinglesDating.com.

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Where's the Integrity?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "Where is the integrity?"

In "Report Sees Cloud Trend for OSS Developers," Herb Torrens reported "Interestingly, more than 51 percent [of developers surveyed] also admitted to us that they spend time on nonwork-related open source projects while at work."

In "May We Have Your Attention, Please?" Businessweek reports "The average knowledge worker has the attention span of a sparrow. Roughly once every three minutes, typical cubicle dwellers set aside whatever they're doing and start something else—anything else. It could be answering the phone, checking e-mail, responding to an instant message, clicking over to YouTube (GOOG), or posting something amusing on Facebook. Constant interruptions are the Achilles' heel of the information economy in the U.S. These distractions consume as much as 28% of the average U.S. worker's day, including recovery time, and sap productivity to the tune of $650 billion a year, according to Basex, a business research company in New York City."

Whether for a contract or permanent position, when I'm getting paid, that time is my client's. Not my own. As I've said before, would you work as a sales clerk at Wal-mart and take $50 out of the cash register for yourself to keep? That's what you're doing to your employer when you spend personal time on non-work related things. No wonder the cost of developing a website is so much when half of the employees are goofing off.

May dishonesty keep you awake at night and integrity grant you blissful sleep, and when it does....

May your dreams be in ASP.NET!

Nannette Thacker

 

Posted: Jan 21 2009, 10:10 AM by nannette | with 12 comment(s)
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Comments

David Taylor said:

I do not like your analogy of taking money out of the till.  It would be better for you to say "would you take longer than you need on your bathroom or tea break", or would you talk to someone on your mobile in the storeroom when you are meant to be unpacking boxes.  The answer for many would probably be yes, at least until their boss tells them to return and serve a customer.

# January 21, 2009 11:30 AM

Gergely Orosz said:

I think this is a phemonenon that can be reduced but cannot be entirely dismissed from IT related work. If I am not under stress or monitored once every 20 minutes I am likely to get distracted. On the other hand if I am under constant stress or monitored my work efficiency will also drop by about 30% on the long run. Show me someone who is efficiently coding for 8 straight hours with half an hour lunchbreak _all the time_. I bet I am be as efficient as him/her having my few minute breaks and getting back to coding refreshened.

Its not that 28% percentage of distraction time that makes projects "cost so much". Those reasons are to be found elsewhere in my opinion.

# January 21, 2009 4:36 PM

Hmm said:

Does posting to your blog at 10 AM on a workday count as non-work-related activity?

# January 21, 2009 4:37 PM

nannette said:

Hmm,

What's your definition of a work day? A day you report to work and get paid for it? Mine too. Yes, if that's the case then "posting to your blog at 10 AM on a workday counts as non-work-related activity."

But, if you're implying that I was posting to my blog at 10:00 am on a workday and someone's paying me for it, let me educate you...

I'm self-employed, between projects. I'm not cheating anybody. Nor has anyone ever paid me during the time I post to my blog.

Just FYI, you cannot go by Blog Post dates and times. I can write a series of 10 blog posts on a Sunday and pre-date them all to publish at 9:00 AM over the course of two weeks -- which I do all the time.

You may think I wrote it during that time-frame, but I wrote it on Sunday.

Nannette

# January 21, 2009 6:21 PM

nannette said:

Gergely,

So if you're distracted 28% of the time, that means for every 8 hours of work, you are spending 2 hours on personal time.

But if, according to the survey, you are working on an open source project, isn't that still programming? Still mind-work? How does working on another project, coding, refresh you to get through the rest of the day?

If I get burned out on something, I just do something else, on the project though. It still allows me to get my mind off the thing that's bugging me, but I'm still working for the client.

There is always something that can break up the tedium. Code-in-front, code-behind, CSS, XML, web service, web control, sql queries, dlls, gdi+, jquery, javascript, goodness! There's so much to do in a web app that you can always find a different route to take a break, but still be productive.

I'm not saying that when I work on-site for a client that I don't get caught up in the cubical-chat-shenanigans among co-workers, but it certainly isn't 2 hours of my day every day of the week!

Nannette

# January 21, 2009 6:33 PM

Gergely Orosz said:

Nannette,

I agree that 28% is quite a lot but I would disagree that this 28% is to be viewed as the Achilles' heel of the information economy. Of course when we're talking Facebooking, browsing flickr or so this is indeed a waste of money. But reading (non-current work related) technical blogs, checking out open source projects is acceptable to a certain point in my opinion just as having a coffee break or smoking a cigarette is ok as well. I don't think you should call this goofing off.

Of course when you're self employed it's really easy to separate when you're working on your project and when you're doing personal stuff and in this case you're totally right about wasting the money of your client. However at a full time job 9 to 5 every single day doing that would fairly be possible and of course in an office distraction factors are way higher thanks to the collegaues.

# January 22, 2009 5:21 AM

nannette said:

David,

When you collect that paycheck and you have $50 for work you did not actually do... you were programming on some open source project the boss didn't assign you and doesn't even know you're doing... or you were playing around on IM's or googling, or playing with your itunes, or facebook or whatever...

You're collecting $50 for doing nothing.

You may not like the analogy, but in my opinion, they're both stealing.

The last project I was on, I had to give an account of my time and how much was on each aspect of the project. Think about it... and be honest with yourself... If you spend 15 minutes on YouTube, where do you log that time? If you spend 30 minutes a day, that adds up to 2.5 hours a week. Being modest, if you are paid $30 an hour, that's $75 a week.

I'm not saying you can't have comaraderie with your fellow employees and take a few breaks to chat here and there. But if you flit from cubical to cubical all day long, chatting about personal issues, you're not only not getting your work done, but you're disrupting the people you're chatting with.

I'm talking about the regular, constant, disruptions in work that can be avoided and should be avoided if you were conscientious enough to just sit down and get the job done.

I've heard it before, that 2 hours of personal time spent, makes 6 hours of actual work more productive than 8 hours of work. I've heard it. But seriously, I haven't seen it.

Nannette

# January 22, 2009 12:12 PM

Anon said:

I'm not sure there is much value in this discussion, Nannette seems to have an absolutist view on the topic.

There are many sources of distraction in a work environment and they are not all the fault of the distracted person.

# January 22, 2009 1:22 PM

Gergely Orosz said:

Nanette,

Who is David? Hopefully you were replying to me. I think we are thinking in a different way of the issue. As an idividual yes, that $75 for doing nothing was not deserved. But I still think its not this +30% of costs which makes software projects expensive and this is not the Achilles heel of the IT industry at all.

There are far more important reasons which cost much more for the company itself: goals not stated clear enough, constantly changing specifications, lack of information flow between team members and so on. And the cost of these are usually way beyond that 30%. My company just had to assign two programmers for 1.5 weeks to re-design the caching mechanism at one of our big deployed portals because it was not designed for the load it received at the start.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think its these kind of extra costs that are the Achilles heel of the industry driving half of the projects to overrun their budget (news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9900455-16.html).

# January 22, 2009 3:42 PM

nannette said:

Gergely,

I was replying to David, at the top of all posts.

In regard to what you say, yes, I agree there are reasons why projects overrun and cost way too much, but couple that with the fact that the developers are not spending 100% of their paid time actually developing and it's no wonder web development costs so much.

I was hired by a man from California to develop a website. There were 4 of us. The project manager, the developer (me), the designer, and the marketing manager. We completed in less time, for less cost, what an entire team of 30 couldn't get done working at a national website. That goes along with the "20% do all the work, 80% do all the goofing off" theory. If you find and employ those 20% you've got a goldmine.

In fact, I had one boss call me his "goldmine." But it all goes back to integrity. If you feel like doing personal things on the job is "cheating" and you are against "cheating," then you won't do it. Our school system is full of cheaters and my children come home from school saying how they see cheating all around them. It's no wonder the work-force is full of people who see nothing wrong with it. It started in school and everyone seems to be doing it, so it must be okay.

But I bet during that one-on-one interview with the boss that they wouldn't be so free to tell their boss all the times they were doing personal things as though it's all right, and expected.

If you can't tell your boss you are doing it, and you try to cover up you're doing it when he enters your cubical, then it must be wrong. Right?

:)

# January 23, 2009 12:05 PM

nannette said:

Anon,

>>There are many sources of distraction in a work environment and they are not all the fault of the distracted person.

Sure there are... but 25% of your day? 1 in 3 minutes?

I've said before I'm not talking about normal, brief distractions. I'm talking about the kind that you wouldn't want your boss to know about...

I'm talking about the distractions that ARE the fault of the distracted person.

Can't you see the difference? I can.

# January 25, 2009 7:04 PM

Wayne said:

As a manager of over 30 .NET developers, I was very surprised you had no supportive responses. It seems several were vocally against, while others simply remained silent.

I've seen a lot of alt-tabbing when I walk past cubicals and I see a lot of goofing off.

If I bid a project and it comes out over budget because the developers are spending 1 in 3 minutes on personal things; my employees are still getting paid; yet guess who loses out?

When I had to lay off 5 developers; guess who were the first to go?

# October 30, 2010 4:51 PM
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