[MattRogish]

I can't keep over-emphasizing the "Results Only Work Environment" (http://www.gorowe.com/). Everyone at my company is evaluated on results - ONLY. Not hours. Just whether or not you're getting your work done, awesomely.

If you get a whole week's worth of tasks done in 20 minutes you're done for the rest of the week. Obviously we did a bad job of estimating (a silly case of course) but - you're done. You don't get more work shoved on your stack. Sit on the beach if you want.

Sure, you can work more, but you're not expected to.

[markokocic]

> Sure, you can work more, but you're not expected to.

Are you sure about this? I tend to believe you really mean this, but it's hard to believe that you, or other managers are not looking at someone doing 20 minutes of work a week as a weasel that hacked a system.

[MattRogish]

I look at it like this:

* Employees are adults who deserve to be treated with honesty, integrity, and respect. In a word: Trust. If they violate that trust, they're out.

I suspect if we indeed estimated a week's worth of work that ended up being literally a NO-OP, the kind of person I'd work with would realize this and re-assess the situation.

In the least, part of our process (and a "result" that people are tracked against) is "continuous improvement" and part of that would be recognizing we messed up somewhere to have that situation occur. Hiding this wouldn't be meeting that result.

It's an extreme example, agreed, but it illustrates a key point: if "management" can hold you accountable for not meeting your goals then they have to be comfortable when you do meet them. Part of the explicit agreement of ROWE is that this is a fair and equitable relationship. Having management assign you more work because you got it done "faster" goes against that agreement.

We track and iterate professional growth weekly. Thus, the expected results are set and evaluated on a week-by-week basis. People tend to find their unique rhythm within a few weeks and reach steady state.

[markokocic]

In that case, if it indeed works like that, sounds like a nice place to work.

I would go even a step further, if all work is result driven, why having work hours anyways? Why not just agree on what has to be done in some future time period, and forget about hours completely?

That way, employees will feel more relaxed, and accomplish more.

I'm sure I can do more in 20 "high hours" than in 40 "forced hours", but if you don't let me work only 20 "high hours" a week, and assign me 20 more "forced hours", it would inevitable lead back to 40 "forced hours" with much more work and less done.

That's why I never bid based on hourly rate, but based on some agreed amount of work, when doing contracts.

[MattRogish]

Correct, in a ROWE (for us; obviously if you're a 7/11 you have open hours, etc.), there's no such thing as "work hours". But, for the same reasons that we have short iterations in scrum, we time-box results to a week so feedback is early and often, and we can continually course-correct.

With our implementation of ROWE, there's no such thing as an "annual performance review" because you essentially get one every week. We have periodic salary review (quarterly) to see if you need adjusted (salary is based on a semi-objective tech ladder we've devised) but otherwise there's no "Let's meet every 12 months so I can check off 'meets expectations' and give you your cost-of-living adjustment"