[ipaddr]

The ability to look productive is a different skill. The ability to create any impression is a skill some have. Creating fires and putting them out like a hero is another skill.

What are your eyes measuring? Are you being fooled?

[theamk]

If you are IC, it's pretty easy to see if your teammates are "looking productive" vs "are really productive", as you know all the code and how it works.

For other teams yeah, it's harder, or maybe even impossible if the teams are isolated.

[InsideOutSanta]

> If you are IC, it's pretty easy to see if your teammates > are "looking productive" vs "are really productive"

I'm not sure how true this really is. We all like to think that we're good at estimating other people's ability, particularly if we work closely with them, but how can you validate that impression?

Something that happened to me at one point in my career was that I joined a team that was half new hires with little experience, and half long-term employees with a lot of experience. Because the long-term employees were typically extremely busy, I ended up answering a lot of questions from the entry-level devs. So I spent time documenting the system, doing trainings, doing 1-on-1 code reviews, and so on.

During the performance review, feedback from the entry-level devs was that I was highly productive, and feedback from the long-term employees was that I was a slacker.