1. The work is never finished. As such no matter how productive you are or not there is more to do. So when do you say "Ok go home early?"
2. My view of productive may differ from my boss - and that gets further afield as the hierarchy goes up - so let's say you were working on Google+ (insert corporate white elephant) - no matter how productive you were in the small, it was ultimately a waste.
3. Output can be measured by reading code, yes absolutely- but it can also be measured by outcome of code (ie the report now runs five tones faster)
these last two is measurement by value - and that gets hairy.
So it's not quite "pointy haired boss" is bad
So does google allow folks to go home early? it is that like the "as much holiday as you like" uncertainty ploy?
No, my developers have a list of tasks to do for the day, and if they finish it, I let them go home. It's that simple.
If you keep pushing work onto developers forever then you're rewarding hard work by giving them more work causing incentive mismatches.
This only works if management has the ability to evaluate the work by reading the code. I can spot when something has a bug in it just by reading the code, I can spot when an interface boundary has been designed badly, and I can spot when there's problems. I can evaluate my developers results, and I can evaluate the developers themselves.
So you hire good developers who have the right attitude and don't game the system for their own benefit, fire the under performers, then everyone goes home at 1PM on friday because their work is done and they are proud of what they built.
Lots of developers might find it hard to believe that everyone wouldn't just do something quickly and go home early, but thats because most developers are near burnout and they just need a break. If you give them 2-3 very light months of work, they recover and then start enjoying their work again ... then nobody games the system and puts their best foot forward.
I also think measuring by value is particularly difficult. How do you compare complicated solutions against elegant solutions when the elegant solution is so nice it makes the problem look trivial?
1. The work is never finished. As such no matter how productive you are or not there is more to do. So when do you say "Ok go home early?"
2. My view of productive may differ from my boss - and that gets further afield as the hierarchy goes up - so let's say you were working on Google+ (insert corporate white elephant) - no matter how productive you were in the small, it was ultimately a waste.
3. Output can be measured by reading code, yes absolutely- but it can also be measured by outcome of code (ie the report now runs five tones faster)
these last two is measurement by value - and that gets hairy.
So it's not quite "pointy haired boss" is bad
So does google allow folks to go home early? it is that like the "as much holiday as you like" uncertainty ploy?