Our startup team of 10 has kept pretty strict time logs for the past 3 years. We have an official policy of 40 hour work weeks, but yeah, no developers are able to have that much productive time. Usually we see about 25-30 hours of solid development time, 5 hours of meeting/admin time, and 5 hours of lunches/coffee/break time.
I'd like to hear more about the choice to keep strict time logs in a startup environment. Especially strict ones that provide enough granularity to see 5 hours of break time/wk.
If you can honestly spend 75% of your office time doing actual development, and divide the rest evenly between breaks and meetings, I'd like to see how.
I've recently got into pomodoro timing. I set the timer for 45 minutes, focus totally on work, then take a fifteenish-minute break. I can't do it all day though.
I know the classic pomodoro technique is supposed to be 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, but a five minute break is too short for me (I like to get out of the building) and the rhythm of the half-hours just goes by too quickly. 45 minute serious-work periods work much better for me.
