It's tough, but what I've seen is low performers weigh the team down. They constantly ask for the high performer's time, and if we give them bug tickets, new feature work, they constantly stumble and always report status as blocked. They don't add value. They can't get to the finish line with anything. It's not a kind thing to point out, but trying to angle it as "oh there's this other benefit you're just not seeing" is trying to work around the fact they can't competently fulfill the job function after exhausting all of our options (training, pair programming, etc). They might be friendly people, but the social boosts don't counteract the losses incurred, it's still a net loss.
You've turned the story round from "Tim MacKinnon is a good programmer and asset to the team which the simple metrics were not tracking" into the strawman "defend people who cant do their jobs and are not an asset to the team by claiming that they are nice people".
It's tough, but what I've seen is low performers weigh the team down. They constantly ask for the high performer's time, and if we give them bug tickets, new feature work, they constantly stumble and always report status as blocked. They don't add value. They can't get to the finish line with anything. It's not a kind thing to point out, but trying to angle it as "oh there's this other benefit you're just not seeing" is trying to work around the fact they can't competently fulfill the job function after exhausting all of our options (training, pair programming, etc). They might be friendly people, but the social boosts don't counteract the losses incurred, it's still a net loss.
You've turned the story round from "Tim MacKinnon is a good programmer and asset to the team which the simple metrics were not tracking" into the strawman "defend people who cant do their jobs and are not an asset to the team by claiming that they are nice people".