My first week at Hubstaff

Last week I joined Hubstaff and I couldn’t be happier. Getting back to work with Ruby and a full remote team is awesome. We also use PostgreSQL which I really love and always hacking it.

The business is quite interesting, tracking time for remote teams. What’s amazing is that one of the core values from Hubstaff is transparency and their software shows exactly what they’re sharing with the team.

As an employee you can also enable data privacy and opt-out for screenshots. I really like the transparency of my manager, walking me through all he sees and how the system presents it from his side.

Time Tracker impressions

I liked it. My Friday ended at 4 PM as the Hubstaff is configured for internal employees limited to 40 hours. I absolutely loved it. I deserved the rest and at this point I just left the computer and went to the waterfall nearby my house.

I observed I finished my days much earlier and with the sense of accomplishment that sometimes I don’t feel as I’m not tracking the time.

I also understood that having the time counter in the tray bar was such a precious way to remind the day is going and you should focus on what is important.

Productivity insights

There are insights related to how do you use your day in the app and they all help you to grow and increase your focus on your role.

Core work vs non-core vs distraction

Understand where do you spend your time. How much do you invest on each tool and how long.

A developer may have LinkedIn as a core-work as a recruiter. Every app can be judged or classified depending your role.

This is very cool and helps to understand how much we’re derailing from the proposed work.

Activity

The percentage of time you’re typing on the keyboard or moving the mouse.

Well, this should never be 100% but should always get into some patterns that looks like a human navigating the computer.

Focus

This is fun! Your ability to not switch tabs 🤓

Even when you want to be focused, sometimes your anxiety hits and you’re forced to switch to “something else”. Well, most of the time it does not help. Switching activities involves a high cost of cognitive load switch and it may not be helpful or healthy for you.

The focus measures your ability of not switching apps. It counts unfocus when you spend less than 90 seconds on an app.

Using Hubstaff as a user made me think a lot about how I relate to time. I wrote about this in Time Economics — the idea that time is your most non-renewable resource and every hour can be viewed through the lens of future value, present value, and authorship. The tracker is essentially a mirror for that: it makes the invisible visible. Core work vs distraction maps directly to future value filtering. The focus metric is a proxy for authorshipmetry — are you writing your own story or just reacting to noise? And that Friday at 4 PM, walking to the waterfall, was pure present value.

Tech stack

Ruby and Postgresql! Yes! These tools make me feel at home. Also, the high standards for code and Q&A are exactly like I expected 🫶🏼

There are also some hardcore low latency components built in Rust which I’m very interested in learning and contributing.