[whyisthewhat]

There is no technical fix that will make managerial time-tracking less of an exercise in control and relentless optimization at the expense of the developer. If you want to preserve some autonomy and dignity, you need to fundamentally restructure the relationship between yourself and management (like with, for instance, a ~union~).

[commandlinefan]

I think this bears some elaboration because I feel the same way, but if we don't talk about _why_ we feel this way, it looks like we're spending our time playing video games and pretending we're working. ("After lunch I just... space out... for a couple of hours. But it looks like I'm working!") I spend a fair amount of time reading documentation; no matter how many programming languages or tools or environments I know, there's always something new to learn. This is true whether I want to learn something new or not - even if I were comfortable just using the stuff I knew when I graduated college, I'll eventually inherit or have to work with something that somebody who knows something newer wrote. As a result, learning new things, reading documentation, experimenting with unknown systems is part of the job - which is completely unappreciated. When I was younger, the managers would ask me what my plan for accomplishing task "X" was and I would start with, "Ok, the first thing I need to do is to learn the environment" and invariably they'd go apeshit when I suggested that I "waste" their time and money on something as pointless as "learning". If I was competent, I'd already know this stuff, and admitting that I needed to waste time reading documentation was sort of an admission of weakness. Of course, being young and naive, I'd try to reason with them but after years and years of having the same circular arguments I finally learned to give bland, inane responses like "research" and avoid giving specifics.

[mixmastamyk]

Part of being a mature "senior" developer is to stop budging on estimates. Give an estimate to the best of your knowledge. Don't budge. If there is not enough time, cut back on scope, not necessary tasks like research. Cite Steve McConnell if you need back up.

[whyisthewhat]

I agree that it’s perfectly reasonable to be expected to be able to give an account of how you spend your time. My point is simply that whether or not this becomes an exercise in serf-like dehumanization and Taylorism depends on the fundamental organizational structure of the workplace, not the technical details of its implementation.