[boxed]

The "solution" to a problem can be to totally redefine it. Another guy might redefine it EVEN MORE. So you get three people:

1. solved the original problem, took 2 days and thousands of lines of code 2. changed the problem, took 20 minutes 50 lines of code 3. changed the problem in another way, took 2 days and thousands of lines but this solution solved TEN problems

Now, which one is "better"? It makes no sense.

[khazhoux]

In all your examples the solution came in 1-2 days. How about this common example? One guys merges one small change every week, of low complexity/difficulty by any measure. His teammate fixes several bugs every week, adds a feature or two also, and is on slack non-stop helping others out?

This is daily life in every tech company. It’s true that in some cases it’s hard to accurately rank between two people (because the work is multidimensional) but in many many cases the discrepancies in productivity are obvious.

[boxed]

No, case 2 took 20 minutes.