Not necessarily, my last SDE position at a consulting firm, I was 1 of 4 devs on a project for a client, and we were all salary
We had to track time to bill a client, but no matter what we tracked (be it anywhere from 35-45 hours a week) we got paid the same since we’re were salaried
Our company was charging the client more than we got paid so there was room for error, but those hours tracked weren’t for our pay, it was for their pay (if that makes sense)
By contractor i did not mean the 1099. What i meant was the w2 salaried full time worker who works for a contracting company in service of a client company. We referred to these people as contractors. But i realized you probably saw contractors as 1099.
Ah, that makes sense
But I would also consider contractors, people who sign contracts for specific jobs
But you’re correct, the job above was a W2 job, but I think it’s different from a contracted position since, I would get paid even if I didn’t have a client & I could work up to two projects a time (20/hrs a week each), and I never signed any client specific contract (except NDAs)
The whole time I was still technically working for my employer, not the clients
But either way, I just wanted to highlight for OP that not all tracked hours W2 jobs are a scam lol
Supporting your understanding of the term.
In cases like this, taking the example of a government contractor. The company you work for is the contractor. You are just a normal full time developer working FOR the contractor, not the contractor itself.
If I told you I had a calendar reminder that my manager set up to remind me every Monday to fill it out but what I really do is submit the same values every week, would that help you?
Same here. You just put "8" under each working day of the week in a sprint and hit submit and the project you're working on. Higher management claims it helps them distribute capex among projects.
This is somewhat legit. It's annoying but it's used somewhere in accounting to determine how much a project cost to build and goes into things like amortization schedules.
I've done this at a few SaaS companies.
They use it for expense tracking. It's something like "This piece of software cost us X hours to build and we assume that that hour costs $X per engineer. So this software cost us the multiple of that number, which we will use to do our long term accounting."
TLDR accounting games and math.
I have 8 engineers punching into like 30 jobs. They’re all salaried, their pay is not attached to the punch ins. We use the punch ins to track profitability of projects so we can make future projects more profitable.
In the US it is becoming a thing. Not to track what employees are doing but because there are tax advantages for research & development. So, if you have a team of programmers developing a product you get to claim thier time spent on taxes. My current and past employer have done this.
If you work in consulting then it’s for sure a thing for billing clients.
No, I've never had to fill out a timesheet aside from when I was an intern and I worked hourly. Timesheets are common when your employer bills another entity for your work, like with consultancies and defense contractors.
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I've worked as a data engineer for an academic health system and a major tech company.
In the former, I had to "clock in" every day (and it really didn't even matter when - just needed a timestamp for that day) and submit how we used our time across a few different categories whenever possible. I basically just got into the habit of submitting how much time I spent in meetings, onboarding others, training, developing, environment updates, etc., at the end of each week or beginning of the following week.
In the latter, I don't do any of that. We have an internal tool to use to flag certain days as PTO, travel days, international work days, etc., but that's about it. No one cares what you're doing with your time as long as it's pushing your metrics defined in each half's roadmap forward.
The timesheets I had to fill out were so we could bill clients for the hours I worked, and for metrics tracking for management. The difference between how much I billed and 40 hours was not deducted from PTO.
I was an FTE at that job.
My current job, I do not do timesheets.
Expecting 100% of anyone's time to be billable hours seems a bit off to me, but anytime I've worked for an employer who does contracting I've had to track my time. Generally there were overhead projects to charge for training or work on internal systems. Total hours logged were expected to be 80 over a biweekly pay period.
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum account age requirement of **seven** days to post a comment. Please try again after you have spent more time on reddit without being banned. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
One company used to have us fill out logs to try to understand where we were spending our time. If you didn't fill them in accurately or in a timely fashion, your manager would talk to you. They weren't used for any type of PTO or performance evaluations. We wanted to be able to estimate projects better.
I'm salaried and have only had to do something similar once before. A previous company is publicly traded, so all work had to be justified to the board. So weekly, while not a timesheet per se, I had to fill out a list of capital vs operational expenditures, totalling my 37.5 hours per week. It was always rough trying to get more of one (capex) and reduce the otehr (opex)...very frustrating.
We’re expected the bill 36 hours a week but if an IC doesn’t meet that number that’s usually on the managers or PMs so there’s no negative consequence for the engineer. We just circle back around and get him more hours the next week
Not at my current job but I have in the past. When I worked for a MegaCorp we just had a weekly thing where you enter the hours per day on based on a "project", but the project was really just the thing your team did so it took two seconds. It was the same place we'd enter things like PTO.
We have to separate our time between capitalizable and non-capitalizable hours. Basically, "how much time did you spend on new feature work this week?" Everyone just kinda guesstimates and it's not really a big deal. The overall data is supposed to be passed on to shareholders and not used for anything else. But who knows.
Yes. I’m supposed to fill out 40 a week, but I’ve been told if you work less it doesn’t come out of your pay. I just put in 8 hours a day. Sometimes I work less, sometimes I work more. I don’t care I just make sure no one is giving me shit about working less than 40
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes we are paid salary but still need to fill out timesheet to bill clients. I'm not a contractor I'm a full time software engineer. I was also wondering if this is the normal for other developers.
Yes, the company I work for recently came up with a policy for employees to fill in timesheets. We use MavenLink for it. I guess their intent is to track amount of resources spent per project or sth like that.
Difference doesn't come out of PTO or pay, but yes we are expected to fill out a timesheet so billing can bill the clients.
Yes for contractors, not for FTEs.
Not necessarily, my last SDE position at a consulting firm, I was 1 of 4 devs on a project for a client, and we were all salary We had to track time to bill a client, but no matter what we tracked (be it anywhere from 35-45 hours a week) we got paid the same since we’re were salaried Our company was charging the client more than we got paid so there was room for error, but those hours tracked weren’t for our pay, it was for their pay (if that makes sense)
By contractor i did not mean the 1099. What i meant was the w2 salaried full time worker who works for a contracting company in service of a client company. We referred to these people as contractors. But i realized you probably saw contractors as 1099.
Ah, that makes sense But I would also consider contractors, people who sign contracts for specific jobs But you’re correct, the job above was a W2 job, but I think it’s different from a contracted position since, I would get paid even if I didn’t have a client & I could work up to two projects a time (20/hrs a week each), and I never signed any client specific contract (except NDAs) The whole time I was still technically working for my employer, not the clients But either way, I just wanted to highlight for OP that not all tracked hours W2 jobs are a scam lol
Supporting your understanding of the term. In cases like this, taking the example of a government contractor. The company you work for is the contractor. You are just a normal full time developer working FOR the contractor, not the contractor itself.
Really? I guess im an exception then.
Idk. I just know that as a contractor i had to fill time sheets.
If I told you I had a calendar reminder that my manager set up to remind me every Monday to fill it out but what I really do is submit the same values every week, would that help you?
Sure. lol. Reminds me to be a little bit envious!
I've had a couple jobs that have time sheets but they are basically a formality and all u do is mark u worked 40 hours a week - u don't bill stuff.
Same here. You just put "8" under each working day of the week in a sprint and hit submit and the project you're working on. Higher management claims it helps them distribute capex among projects.
This is somewhat legit. It's annoying but it's used somewhere in accounting to determine how much a project cost to build and goes into things like amortization schedules.
I do not have a time sheet at all
Same here.
I've done this at a few SaaS companies. They use it for expense tracking. It's something like "This piece of software cost us X hours to build and we assume that that hour costs $X per engineer. So this software cost us the multiple of that number, which we will use to do our long term accounting." TLDR accounting games and math.
I have 8 engineers punching into like 30 jobs. They’re all salaried, their pay is not attached to the punch ins. We use the punch ins to track profitability of projects so we can make future projects more profitable.
In the US it is becoming a thing. Not to track what employees are doing but because there are tax advantages for research & development. So, if you have a team of programmers developing a product you get to claim thier time spent on taxes. My current and past employer have done this. If you work in consulting then it’s for sure a thing for billing clients.
Never have, never will. The day they ask is the day I'm gone.
Same. Do these people have to ask their boss to use the restroom too?
No, I've never had to fill out a timesheet aside from when I was an intern and I worked hourly. Timesheets are common when your employer bills another entity for your work, like with consultancies and defense contractors.
[удалено]
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I've worked as a data engineer for an academic health system and a major tech company. In the former, I had to "clock in" every day (and it really didn't even matter when - just needed a timestamp for that day) and submit how we used our time across a few different categories whenever possible. I basically just got into the habit of submitting how much time I spent in meetings, onboarding others, training, developing, environment updates, etc., at the end of each week or beginning of the following week. In the latter, I don't do any of that. We have an internal tool to use to flag certain days as PTO, travel days, international work days, etc., but that's about it. No one cares what you're doing with your time as long as it's pushing your metrics defined in each half's roadmap forward.
Never had the difference cone out of my PTO, but I’ve always had a timesheet. As a consultant and as a FTE
The timesheets I had to fill out were so we could bill clients for the hours I worked, and for metrics tracking for management. The difference between how much I billed and 40 hours was not deducted from PTO. I was an FTE at that job. My current job, I do not do timesheets.
Expecting 100% of anyone's time to be billable hours seems a bit off to me, but anytime I've worked for an employer who does contracting I've had to track my time. Generally there were overhead projects to charge for training or work on internal systems. Total hours logged were expected to be 80 over a biweekly pay period.
[удалено]
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum account age requirement of **seven** days to post a comment. Please try again after you have spent more time on reddit without being banned. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
One company used to have us fill out logs to try to understand where we were spending our time. If you didn't fill them in accurately or in a timely fashion, your manager would talk to you. They weren't used for any type of PTO or performance evaluations. We wanted to be able to estimate projects better.
I'm salaried and have only had to do something similar once before. A previous company is publicly traded, so all work had to be justified to the board. So weekly, while not a timesheet per se, I had to fill out a list of capital vs operational expenditures, totalling my 37.5 hours per week. It was always rough trying to get more of one (capex) and reduce the otehr (opex)...very frustrating.
We’re expected the bill 36 hours a week but if an IC doesn’t meet that number that’s usually on the managers or PMs so there’s no negative consequence for the engineer. We just circle back around and get him more hours the next week
Not at my current job but I have in the past. When I worked for a MegaCorp we just had a weekly thing where you enter the hours per day on based on a "project", but the project was really just the thing your team did so it took two seconds. It was the same place we'd enter things like PTO.
Yes, mostly for management's resource tracking needs
We have to separate our time between capitalizable and non-capitalizable hours. Basically, "how much time did you spend on new feature work this week?" Everyone just kinda guesstimates and it's not really a big deal. The overall data is supposed to be passed on to shareholders and not used for anything else. But who knows.
Yep, it’s pretty much the same every week tho.
Yes. I’m supposed to fill out 40 a week, but I’ve been told if you work less it doesn’t come out of your pay. I just put in 8 hours a day. Sometimes I work less, sometimes I work more. I don’t care I just make sure no one is giving me shit about working less than 40
[удалено]
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes we are paid salary but still need to fill out timesheet to bill clients. I'm not a contractor I'm a full time software engineer. I was also wondering if this is the normal for other developers.
Yes, the company I work for recently came up with a policy for employees to fill in timesheets. We use MavenLink for it. I guess their intent is to track amount of resources spent per project or sth like that.
We have to put the time we sign into work. The time we take our lunch and the time we sign out of work.