Measuring Engineering Productivity | Off by One
A lightweight system for measuring engineering productivity that puts the overhead on managers, not engineers—using changelogs, standups, and visibility over surveillance
Engineers love to measure things: latency, throughput, error rates. But try to measure their own work? Then metrics become the enemy. I get it. I’ve seen enough terrible systems to understand the resistance. Most systems fail, thanks to Goodhart’s Law . Measure the lines of code written, and people jack up verbosity. Measure the number of PRs, and people start dividing up their PRs. Yet, it all feels like you have to measure something . Every manager knows that some people are more productive than others. Clearly, there’s a way to ascertain productivity. And even a given individual has their e
saved by
related reading
- Running 1:1s for Engineersjustoffbyone.com
- claude code is not making your product betterethanding.substack.com
- How To Do Lessalexturek.com
- AI is removing the middle class of software engineeringblog.florianherrengt.com
- How I ship projects at big tech companiesseangoedecke.com
- Measuring an engineering organization. | Irrational Exuberancelethain.com
- Estimating the Productivity of an Autonomous AI Software Engineer | Cognitioncognition.ai
- Notes on software qualityanthonyhobday.com
- AddyOsmani.com - 21 Lessons From 14 Years at Googleaddyosmani.com
- Building something no one else can measuresriramk.com
- Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity – Terrible Softwareterriblesoftware.org
- Why I Ignore The Spotlight as a Staff Engineer - Lalit Magantilalitm.com