[_bxg1]

As a salaried employee I find it insulting, demeaning, and even distracting when I'm forced to record hours, not even mentioning what being spied on would do to me (thankfully I've never had to deal with the latter situation). Gladly, my current workplace doesn't have any such procedures. My previous one was fairly stringent on hour-recording even when working at the office.

I am not a child nor an inmate, and can therefore be trusted not to try and game the system to do as little work as I can possibly get away with. I shoot for eight hours. If things go past nine hours without a specific source of pressing urgency, I don't feel uncomfortable asserting my work-life balance. If I really get into the zone and have a super-productive day I don't feel uncomfortable logging off after seven hours.

Whereas if I'm on a clock, I'm watching the clock, constantly. I have trouble entering a deep-work headspace. I feel guilty and second-guess myself every time I stand up for a minute. I'll subconsciously space out at my desk more often because "I'm putting in the hours".

Everybody's different, I just wanted to add a data point. I'm somewhat ADD and if I'm forced to be either completely on and tracking the minutes or completely off, instead of jumping back and forth like I naturally do, my productivity tanks.