[bunsenhoneydew]

This is one of the features of https://codescene.com/

It looks for knowledge islands and relates those to frequently modified code, to identify hotspot, or areas of high risk due to low knowledge distribution in areas of high change.

Another use is if someone hands in their notice you can easily see all the code that only they know, so your handover planning is mapped out easily.

I’ve never thought of it being used maliciously, it’s for visibility. It would be a shitty manager that would use it that way and if they’re already shitty then this tool won’t change that.

[llm_trw]

>I’ve never thought of it being used maliciously, it’s for visibility. It would be a shitty manager that would use it that way and if they’re already shitty then this tool won’t change that.

You are a member of the intelligence community of a country, let's call it Tussia, which has been locked out of the leading kernel for military hardware in the world. Let's call that Kinux.

You know that the guy down the office has started a project to fork that kernel for your countries own internal usage. You're an over achiever and want a promotion before he gets one. You call acquisitions for 8 female agents with special training for intimacy with nerds, you also make a back up call for 8 doses of polonium in case the agents aren't successful.

In case you think the above is fiction I know a CEO of a unicorn startup who got the first part of the treatment when he was looking for seed funding.

[behringer]

Yes, honestly that's so glaringly obvious that the author of the tool really ought to stop dismissing the criticism out of hand and take it seriously.

He's built a tool that generates hitlists for any competitor to use.

[1123581321]

Did it work?

[llm_trw]

To protect the guilty, and any future books I might write on the subject, I'll leave it to your imagination.

[vasvir]

Dont' forget the movie...

[aa-jv]

You'd basically be writing a treatise on the Peter Principle, anyway ..

[healsdata]

> I’ve never thought of it being used maliciously, it’s for visibility. It would be a shitty manager that would use it that way and if they’re already shitty then this tool won’t change that.

I've had three jobs where Pluralsight Flow was introduced. At two of them, the managers immediately started using the metrics for feedback, performance reviews, employment decisions. At the third, the developers saw this coming a mile away and refused to engage with or evaluate the tool.

Unfortunately, the absurd pricing of these tools means that people who approve them have to get some sort of ROI. Since they don't have a good way to measure productivity/output/knowledge silos, they instead turn to "Well Jose had less PRs this week..."

[toss1]

Excellent points about visiblity, as long as you can keep it in that domain.

But this always lurks in the near shadows:

>>I’ve never thought of it being used maliciously, it’s for visibility. It would be a shitty manager that would use it that way

Therein lies the problem, on both sides. It would just become another arms race, as the developers would use it to identify and move into target project areas/components to get themselves on the list of un-fireable workers. Ideally, the workers would ensure work together to ensure that the truck_factor was zero, i.e., none of them could be fired.

Of course all of this rapidly becomes a (nearly)complete waste of time, proving the blogger's friends original point: >>"My coworkers said it would immediately hit Goodhart’s Law. "

[yellow_lead]

An outside firm might use this to help a company conduct layoffs. Manager could be amazing