[tomatohs]

The problem is that we do not have a standard "output unit."

> Productivity: the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input.

We can all agree "lines of code" is a shit metric, and we can't say "# of bugs closed," because each will have variable difficulty and value. Programmers employed by a business are in charge of automating repetitive tasks, not performing them (the classic measure of productivity).

I perform UX research on APIs. Here, we standardize the "output unit" and therefore can get a better idea of a developer's productivity. Every developer performs the same task, so we can simply measure time spent.

There will never be an ethical solution to measure developer productivity during the workday; this isn't Ford's assembly line.

[QuercusMax]

Even worse, # of bugs closed may be measuring the inverse of what you think you are. See the classic Dilbert cartoon about "writing yourself a new minivan".

[convolvatron]

I actually had an employee that would write up highly convoluted big reports that I just couldn't understand. he would close them a week later - sometimes with a meaningless patch, sometimes without. couldn't fire him - he was my cofounders toady.

the only reason I beat him on 'bugs fixed' is that one of my jobs was to dig through the old issues and remove them if they weren't clear or relevant.

[chrisBob]

https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13

Thank You. I had not seen that one before.