Question for other IT folk
Feb. 7th, 2018 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayFor the last few years, my company has been doing a Drive To 85 initiative (they love titles like that), which has different meanings for different areas, but for IT, it means that we're supposed to aim for at least 85% of our time to be logged on development/maintenance work.
Preferably 90%, but they're settling for 85% right now.
The definition of this is that all time at our desks working on stuff or in meetings (staff, project) is logged as development time. All other time (vacation, statutory holidays, sick, appointments, annual review, training, personal development) is logged as non-development time. The 85% is calculated from that.
I got curious, because I've realised that the last time we were offered any kind of training course (other than access to on-our-own-time on-line courses) was before the initiative began, so I did some maths.
If I take my full four weeks of vacation, all the statutory holidays (rare), company average sick time (we got told it, as a reason for why we only get 8 days), a couple of doctor's appointments, and actually log a couple of hours for my annual review...I just about clear the 85% mark. JUST. If I were to log any training time or personal development, I'd be at less than 85%. And anyone with more than four weeks of vacation immediately goes below 85% unless they never get sick. None of us will ever hit 90%, unless we stop taking our full vacation time.
We were told the 85% goal is standard for the IT industry and achieving it is a sign of a good IT shop. So my questions are thus:
1) Is this a measure any of you have ever heard of?
2) Does your company/department have this goal?
3) If it does, how is it calculated? How do any of you achieve that while actually attending any training/workshops/conferences? (I've heard people in other companies still actually do this kind of thing, which sounds like a strange and delightful concept that I miss.)
I'm not expecting to use this info in my current job, but it would be helpful to get some idea of what to expect at another company on this front.
Preferably 90%, but they're settling for 85% right now.
The definition of this is that all time at our desks working on stuff or in meetings (staff, project) is logged as development time. All other time (vacation, statutory holidays, sick, appointments, annual review, training, personal development) is logged as non-development time. The 85% is calculated from that.
I got curious, because I've realised that the last time we were offered any kind of training course (other than access to on-our-own-time on-line courses) was before the initiative began, so I did some maths.
If I take my full four weeks of vacation, all the statutory holidays (rare), company average sick time (we got told it, as a reason for why we only get 8 days), a couple of doctor's appointments, and actually log a couple of hours for my annual review...I just about clear the 85% mark. JUST. If I were to log any training time or personal development, I'd be at less than 85%. And anyone with more than four weeks of vacation immediately goes below 85% unless they never get sick. None of us will ever hit 90%, unless we stop taking our full vacation time.
We were told the 85% goal is standard for the IT industry and achieving it is a sign of a good IT shop. So my questions are thus:
1) Is this a measure any of you have ever heard of?
2) Does your company/department have this goal?
3) If it does, how is it calculated? How do any of you achieve that while actually attending any training/workshops/conferences? (I've heard people in other companies still actually do this kind of thing, which sounds like a strange and delightful concept that I miss.)
I'm not expecting to use this info in my current job, but it would be helpful to get some idea of what to expect at another company on this front.
