Re: Positive meditations (relaxation) or outright theft?

"Theft" seems like a rather harsh term for spending your time on a perl script.
I tend to follow a simple rule: If the servers are down or the users can't get their work done, then it's probably not a good time to be noodling with Perl. Other than that, I tend to take the view that, as an adult, I can make some judgement calls on what the best use of my time is.
Working with Perl makes me a better SysAdmin, and my boss mostly "gets it" (thank god), but I tend to do it when there's nothing pressing on my list.

It's also a form of "relaxation" that directly benefits the company. In contrast, a non-admin in a cubicle near mine seems to spend the majority of her day making personal calls. This makes it all too easy for me to justify an hour here and there with my friend perl.

My advice is to not sweat it unless your finding that you're not getting your real work done. Results matter more than a minute-by-minute accounting of your time.
/.02

~monk d4vis
#!/usr/bin/fnord

Comment on Re: Positive meditations (relaxation) or outright theft?

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Re(2): Positive meditations (relaxation) or outright theft? by FoxtrotUniform (Prior) on May 14, 2002 at 16:19 UTC
Well said, d4vis! I don't think any reasonable company (put more cynically, any reasonably realistic company) is going to expect you to keep your nose to the grindstone for every minute of your workday. If no deadline looms, people are going to take it easy, and hacking on Perl projects is more useful to your employer than, say, reading Usenet or running a hockey pool. Most of the programmers at my workplace keep a handful of interesting technical books around for those idle moments between crises, and management sanctions these occasional breaks as long as we deliver on time. I think this is one major reason why the standard of programming here is so high. (The other is code reviews.) The concern that I have with the idea of idle hacking at work is that you tend to run into intellectual property issues (c.f. tilly's unfortunate situation). If you can avoid those and meet your deadlines, more power to you. `-- :wq`	[reply]

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Re(2): Positive meditations (relaxation) or outright theft?
by FoxtrotUniform (Prior) on May 14, 2002 at 16:19 UTC

Well said, d4vis!

I don't think any reasonable company (put more cynically, any reasonably realistic company) is going to expect you to keep your nose to the grindstone for every minute of your workday. If no deadline looms, people are going to take it easy, and hacking on Perl projects is more useful to your employer than, say, reading Usenet or running a hockey pool.

Most of the programmers at my workplace keep a handful of interesting technical books around for those idle moments between crises, and management sanctions these occasional breaks as long as we deliver on time. I think this is one major reason why the standard of programming here is so high. (The other is code reviews.)

The concern that I have with the idea of idle hacking at work is that you tend to run into intellectual property issues (c.f. tilly's unfortunate situation). If you can avoid those and meet your deadlines, more power to you.

-- :wq

[reply]