AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
3min snip
How Google measures developer productivity | Ciera Jaspan, Collin Green (Google)
Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda
The Problem With Reductionist Metrics for Productivity
Using reductionist metrics like number of commits or pull requests to measure productivity can create several issues. It can lead to deformed incentives where individuals focus on optimizing the measured metric rather than overall quality or diverse aspects of work. Incentivizing more lines of code, for example, may result in quantity over quality and discourage other valuable contributions like architectural thinking. Simplifying productivity to one metric may overlook important trade-offs between speed and quality, leading to potentially negative long-term consequences like high attrition rates. Additionally, the human element is often ignored in these reductionist approaches, neglecting the impact on individuals who have to work within the confines of these narrow metrics and potentially leading to disengagement or burnout.
00:00
Transcript
Episode notes
Get the Snipd
podcast app
Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
AI-powered
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode