[planet-and-halo]

The problem with "gamifying" work is well-known to anyone who actually studies human motivation. Any exercise of control, and especially anything that makes people focus on their performance rather than the actual task they are doing, is bound to decrease motivation and quality. When kids worry about the test and their grade, they learn less. When professional athletes start worrying about the score instead of trusting their bodies, they do worse. This is a pretty basic feature of human psychology, but for some silly reason we think we can outwit it if we make our methods of control "fun" enough.

[ben-gy]

IMHO, yes and no - I think it’s important to look at both; collective outcomes (net output), and cultural response to threats. I’m Australian and a 100% believer this concept of creating metrics for developers is complete trash and is more a reflection on an inability of leadership to manage and scale a quality engineering culture.

That said, I have worked across APAC and I can see that this metric-driven, fear-based approach can work very effectively to achieve short term gains when applied in some cultures - particularly those where the gap between the haves and the have nots is relatively large.

It is extremely unfortunate that is the case. That said, whilst it is, it perpetuates (not blaming anyone, just is a factual observation) the confidence for sub-par leadership to impose/experiment with such methods.

[planet-and-halo]

Couldn't agree more. In the short term it can be very effective. It's much like taking steroids, it will work temporarily but can easily spiral and impose a long-term cost.