>Hi there! I write you from Russia. Everything crazy here. I work at big organization. Now with another programmer I write big application on client – server technology. Client is Vfp 6.0, Server – MsSql 7.0. We wrote about 52 forms (with new methods and properties of course), 9 reports, 5 stored procedures, 2 classes, 7 triggers, 70 tables, and 13 views. By the way we setup Windows Nt 4.0, Ms SQl 7.0. Before all we described business rules. All that took 3 month. Our boss which does’not know programming tell that it very little. Please tell do you have some normative for you business. Where they describe? Thank you.

I have wondered some of these things myself. I suppose that in any country: 1) looking busy is as important as being busy if you work on site and 2) there is only so much you can do about an unreasonable boss, except leave, which isn't easy if the economy is bad.

A real IT manager would be responsible for knowing how long these things should take, I suppose. A non-technical manager just has to guess whether people are working and have the skills they need. I try to be as responsive as possible to the needs of my colleagues. Even if it takes me a while to solve something, I make sure they know that I understand the problem and that I'm trying to anticipate their needs. I have no formal system for doing that. My supervisors know that my company won't pay enough to attract the top talent and that when I become highly experienced I will probably leave.

Others here probably have better advice.