Ask any vendor in this category what their score means and you get the same answer twice removed: it reflects activity, activity correlates with output, output is what you care about. Both steps in that chain are wrong, and the second one is wrong in a way that costs people their jobs. Ask any vendor in this category what their score means and you get the same answer twice removed: it reflects activity, activity correlates with output, output is what you care about. Both steps in that chain are wrong, and the second one is wrong in a way that costs people their jobs. Ask any vendor in this category what their score means and you get the same answer twice removed:
What A Score Actually Measures
A productivity score is built from the signals a computer can see cheaply: keystrokes, mouse movement, window focus, sometimes a screenshot every few minutes. None of those are work. They are the residue of one particular way of working — sitting at a desk, typing — and they systematically undercount the parts of a job that matter most. The engineer who spends an afternoon reading code and writes eleven lines has a bad day by this measure. So does the account manager who talks a client out of leaving, and the designer who thinks in a notebook.
A productivity score is built from the signals a computer can see cheaply: keystrokes, mouse movement, window focus, sometimes a screenshot every few minutes. None of those are work. They are the residue of one particular way of working — sitting at a desk, typing — and they systematically undercount the parts of a job that matter most. The engineer who spends an afternoon reading code and writes eleven lines has a bad day by this measure. So does the account manager who talks a client out of leaving, and the designer who thinks in a notebook.
What Happens To A Team
Introduce a number and people optimize for it. This is not cynicism, it is the entire history of measurement in organizations. Within a fortnight you have mouse jugglers, meetings held open for the focus time, and a quiet understanding that the thing being rewarded is not the thing being asked for. Introduce a number and people optimize for it. This is not cynicism, it is the entire history of measurement in organizations. Within a fortnight you have mouse jugglers, meetings held open for the focus time, and a quiet understanding that the thing being rewarded is not the thing being asked for.
“The moment a number can end your week badly, your relationship is with the number, not with your manager.”
The second cost is slower and worse. Good people leave quietly, and the reason they give in the exit conversation is rarely the software — it is that they stopped being trusted and could not say so out loud. The second cost is slower and worse. Good people leave quietly, and — it is that they stopped being trusted and could not say so out loud.
What We Do Instead
Chronoca records three things and stops: when a day started and ended, the gaps that became breaks, and an optional note in your own words. That is enough for payroll, for invoicing, and for a manager to notice somebody has been working eleven-hour days for a month. Chronoca records three things and stops: when a day started and ended, the gaps that became breaks, and an optional note in your own words.
- No screenshots, ever — your screen is never captured or sampled.
- No keystroke counting, because typing quickly is not working hard.
- One view of the week — identical for the person who worked it and the person who approves it.
We are writing this down publicly so it costs us something to break. If a productivity score ever appears in Chronoca, we will have broken our own promise, and you should hold us to it in exactly those terms. If a productivity score ever appears in Chronoca, we will have broken our own promise, and you should hold us to it in exactly those terms.
Elena Marsh
Co-founder. Writes most of what appears here, and answers support on Thursdays.
