| > If you need an X, how quickly can you implement an X at a high level of quality? That's the wrong question for anyone who's not a new grad junior engineer. If these are the only kinds of question you're addressing, you're probably replaceable by a Ukrainian dev shop. In reality depending on your particular role and organization the questions you need to answer range from "How do I find product-market fit" at an early-stage startup to "How do I meet my client's requirements" to "How do I move the needle on X metrics" at a big company. The key difference between these kinds of questions is that there can be many different routes, and measuring "productivity" in one metric limits the ability to explore. For example, "How fast can you implement a chat widget" doesn't allow for the exploration of alternative ways to engage with customers -- emailing them directly might've been much better. Even assuming you are very "focused" on pure engineering, measuring the speed of implementing X doesn't account for "productivity" on a personal level, i.e. perhaps you built it in 5 days but now you're burnt out for the next month. Or you had other projects you didn't end up working on. Or you neglected your family. By the way, you handwaved over "X level of quality" but I'm sure we all know that this in itself is nontrivial to gauge. There are many goals that may count as "productivity", and you don't necessarily even know all of them. Therefore its quantification is nontrivial. |
If you make a list of alternatives, and you don't know which one is the best, having higher overall velocity allows you to try more options.