The Stack Overflow Podcast How to do your job happier
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Jul 18, 2025 John Flournoy, a social science researcher and consultant at Pluralsight, shares valuable insights on enhancing developer productivity. He dives into the importance of balancing subjective and objective measures of well-being to increase job satisfaction. Flournoy discusses redefining productivity metrics, moving beyond traditional measures to better understand developer experience. He also touches on the future of developer success research, advocating for qualitative methods and comprehensive models that recognize the complexities of the tech workspace.
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John Flournoy's Career Journey
- John Flournoy shares his journey from adolescent neuroscience to software developer research.
- His path combined early computing interest with research computing infrastructure work in science.
Cycle Time Metric Limitations
- Simple metrics like cycle time are accessible but insufficient to capture true developer productivity.
- Cycle time shows high variability, making single values misleading indicators of performance.
Variability in Developer Cycle Times
- More coding time generally correlates with faster ticket closing but has a small effect due to large task variability.
- Individual monthly cycle times fluctuate greatly, driven by changing work context and nature.