[5thaccount]

Not "an", as in singular measure, no. But what about several? Is there a single metric for "heathy"? Someone can be OK in almost all ways but have a broken leg. Are they "healthy" by a single metric? What about diabetes that is managed? Can you think of any field in life where there is a singular metric for performance? If not, why does the non-existence of a singular metric in tech invalidate the idea?

And what about in reverse? What if, rather than finding the "best", we merely have a metric/s that weed out the worst? If I remove the bottom 15% effectively, and replace them with average performers, then the net gain is massive, especially as each extra bug introduced is a massive time sink for any team, and poor developers are a massive cause of that.