Clock-Punching and the Illusion of Control
This week I came across a poll on LinkedIn asking whether salaried employees should be required to punch in and out. My reply summarised my view:
Focusing on the knowledge industry. Even if you choose to put the cultural aspects aside, what could you meaningfully deduce from the data other than "person x was (probably) in the office between the hours of y and z"? (I say "probably" as you could tailgate with colleagues, etc).
This is a perfect example of a vanity metric rooted in the illusion of control. You stand to lose a lot of trust and gain nothing in exchange."
Willard Le Grand Bundy invented "an early and influential time clock, sometimes described as the first" in 1888. Clock-punching became an easy way for shops and offices to calculate employees' pay in an era in which I claim it was not unreasonable to assume that physical presence approximated productivity.
I want to reiterate that my perspective is from the knowledge industry generally and software engineering specifically, but my stance is that societal shifts over the last forty years have made the practice of clock-punching obsolete.
