Comment by empiko
1 month ago
It is not absurd. From manager's point of view, when they are deciding to let someone go or promote them, they often need some arguments. And since software is invisible, it is often hard to just say straight away who is over/underperforming and why you think so apart from a "vibe" you are having. Measuring some relevant metrics can strengthen your argument and/or your overview of the situation.
I don't think that the blog makes a compelling argument why measuring productivity is bad per se. It makes a compelling argument that metrics should not be interpreted blindly, but the metrics in this case identified a guy that was doing something unusual, and the managers managed to interpret why this is the case. But if it was an IC that is supposed to deliver, or if you did not want "Tim" to spend his time coaching people, this could still have been valuable info.
I don't think it is absurd to reason about individual contributions, just to focus on measuring them with metrics. I have been on the management side as well though I admit I am much more of an IC. But the way I think that should go is laddering up to business value by describing what the person did and why that contribution was important.
So for example I would say something like: X deserves a promotion because their work was important to delivering project A on time. Project A was difficult but worthwhile because it allowed us as a business to meet goals 1 and 2.
That said I mostly work in smaller orgs. I have never been in a situation where a manager would be so removed from a team they would need a sort of proxy metric to direct them where to focus their attention to understand what the people on their team are doing day to day. I can see how this would get more difficult as a company grows.