Just measure the output, damn it!
Why we need to stop counting hours and start counting results
Scene 1
It was raining cats and dogs (and wolves) in parts of South India from October 15th-17th, leading to flood-like situations in several cities. Amidst this, one of my juniors shared a screenshot from his office WhatsApp group (seriously, folks- let's stop using WhatsApp for official communication) where his manager and seniors were asking people to come to the office or to make sure they’d be present on specific days. My junior had sarcastically replied, “No worries, Sir! I’ll brave any weather tomorrow, even if it rains hard.”
I'm sure a lot of office conversations sounded similar that week.
Scene 2
Later that day, I overheard a colleague say, “I’m such a workaholic; I come to the office five days a week.”
Scene 3
**Daily Stand-up Call**
The junior developer or analyst:
“Good morning, everyone! Yesterday, I spent three hours fixing a bug. But while doing that, I encountered another one. I’ll be working on both bugs today.”
The manager:
“Okay, Madhu. Do you have any idea how long it might take?”
“I’m not sure. Give me some time.”
“Alright, let me know by noon.”
Scene 4
It’s Thursday evening. The senior lead has just realized her team hasn’t added this week’s “progress” slide for tomorrow’s review call with the director. She freaks out and calls the analysts, asking them to complete the slides. She plans to join around 9:30 PM once she’s home.
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Despite being different people, these examples share a common approach where a person’s work is measured by input factors: hours in the office, days spent at work, hours coding, etc. Few focus on the output—how much is getting done by X? Is it enough?
This mindset, unfortunately, is widespread. Sooner or later, it leads to micromanagement, making things difficult for juniors who are more hands-on with the project.
Another major issue here, which many managers (often “Indian Uncles” - and I mean no disrespect, as I’m one of them, though not an Indian Uncle Manager) miss, is that it signals a lack of trust in the people they’ve hired. Constantly checking in, asking for updates once or even twice a day (or once a week for bigger teams), implies distrust. If you don’t trust them, why were they hired in the first place? It essentially points to a double failure: as a resource manager and as a hiring manager.
This doesn’t mean managers shouldn’t ask for updates or track progress. They should. However, updates can be managed with simple, low-effort Excel sheets rather than fancy but unnecessary PowerPoints.
Similarly, progress tracking can be more efficient through milestones like “Objective A is done, Objective B is in progress” rather than “How many hours did you spend on Objective A?”
While writing this post, I came across a LinkedIn post from the CEO of Tata Play that summed this up nicely.
Tired of outdated metrics and micromanagement? Share this with someone who needs to read it!