Should time of thinking be paid?
It sounds funny, but many (even, probably, most) programmers think that they work not only when they do something useful, for example they write software code, documentation, articles, draw diagrams, charts that necessary for project, read lectures, teach colleagues but also when they think about work. Some even sent bill of their work hours with description “I was walking and thought about the project.”
In my opinion this is a completely absurd wish, although humanly understandable — everyone wants to earn more. Judging from my experience, it is possible to think about the project indefinitely, thinking has no value, it does not give anything and does not bring benefits. Benefit brings only the result of work that is so valuable for someone that he will pay money for it. Any person keen on something constantly thinks about it, even when he does not notice it, even in night dreams. If a strong desire is formed in the head, some goal, then the brain in the subconscious always thinks of it, round the clock, periodically giving out to the consciousness the result in the form of sudden insights. That is people who are confident that the time of thinking should be paid, must bill all 24 hours a day all the time that they participate in the project. In other words, demand payment in working days and not in hours. Although the bill with the description “I thought about the project two working days, pay me please” is no better than the previous one.
Another nuance of this approach it discriminates more experienced employees who do not need to spend time thinking because they already know in advance how to do it and immediately give the best result.
It can be said that the refuse to pay time for time of thinking provokes employees to create the appearance of work and implement the simplest approach that came to mind without a thorough analysis of the issue. But this kind of problems are removed through quality control. Attempts to create the appearance of work instead of real work, the issuance of a low-quality result, should be identified in time in any project and lead to the replacement of the worker. A deep analysis of the problem must be expressed in something. It is impossible to analyze a complex problem without records, drawing diagrams, experiments, intermediate results. So, these results, issued in the form of relevant documents, should be billed, but not just the process of thinking. The process of thinking and research should be formalized. If you do not write down the results of your speculations, even intermediate, it is difficult to achieve progress and order in your thoughts, and the time spent to thoughts that are not organized not ordered and not written down is wasted.
Thinking should be expressed in some thoughts that can be written down and you should send bills for these documents. For example: “I have been thinking for two hours and during this time I have considered the following options …, I came to the following conclusions … rejected as unsatisfactory the following approaches ….”
When scientists investigate a problem, they do not bill “we thought about this problem 200 working hours, please pay.” They provide results in the form of reports, descriptions of the experiments done, descriptions of what approaches have already been tried, what ones are planned to try, plans describing how much time and resources it will take, etc.
Therefore, the not written down and not ordered results of thinking are worthless and billing of time of the process of thinking is absurd.
