[ufukbay]

Meh, if you want to go to the extremes there is no limit. I agree with what you said but it's completely out of context and I don't see how it is related to the topic.

In my eyes, it's relative to you or the situation in which you are in. For me personally it felt a lot like abuse and utter lack of trust to resolve using time sheets for a permanent position (not talking about freelancers and contractors).

Also why do you think that we are spoiled? I'm so fed up of people making software development look like a piece of cake and so easy. I tried to help some of my friends start with coding but after couple days they were quite overwhelmed and thought it was not so straightforward as imagined or as it looks to be. I'm also not talking about creating a hello world HTML document.

I'm definitely not a rock star programmer but I try to be solid one with hands-on mindset. I have 5 1/2 years experience working as a front end developer and there is still so much to learn and to improve on. Software development (especially web) is a field where you need to stay up to date and keen. We might not be exhausted physically but it's much harder to recharge and relax your mind.

This is why we shouldn't just put up with everything (timesheets is only one example of many) for the sake of having a job at all (because there are so many unemployed people right?). There are people who want to play safe and I'm fine with that but I learned that "no risk no fun" is true.

Update:

I want to add that I'm always grateful for what I have and don't take anything for granted. However I also know that I don't get anything for free unless you work hard for it.

[whack]

I think his point is that just because an employer wants to log your time, and see how you're spending your time while at work, doesn't mean it's abuse. If they're paying you for your time, it's perfectly reasonable for them to see how you're spending your time.

Now, whether you choose to put up with it or leave, that's a different question. Given a choice, most people would choose an employer who gives them more latitude, as opposed to one who is monitoring them that closely. But that's an argument based on practicality, not morality.

[zaccus]

The overall point is that there isn't a 1:1 correlation between time and productivity in this industry as there is in, say, working a cash register.

I might spend a couple of hours trying to debug something screwy with my dev environment, or googling around and thinking about what the solution to a problem, that doesn't create more tech debt, should look like. I might spend time dealing with feedback in code review, some of which may be beyond the scope of the story or not immediately perceptible by a stakeholder, but it's work that needs to be done nonetheless. Project managers are not developers for the most part, so they have to trust me on that.

When you hire someone to do tasks that you could do yourself, then asking them to log time is reasonable since you know what needs to be done and what the timeframe should look like. Asking a highly skilled employee such as a software developer to log time is an insult to their judgment and a waste of their (and your) time. You can't gauge my productivity from a time log.

This quibbling over the term 'abuse', like we should all just be thankful we're not sex slaves or PHP devs and leave it at that, is completely irrelevant. Fine, it's not abuse. It's just antagonistically treating your employees like untrustworthy delinquents. Is that better?

[blowski]

Precisely. You're saying that having to do things you'd rather not do is 'abuse', when I'd just call that 'being a grown up'.