[gaigalas]

In practical terms, "productivity" is any metric that people with power can manipulate (cheating numbers, changing narratives, etc) to affect behavior of others to their interests.

ALL OF IT is meaningless. It's a pointless discussion.

[greggyb]

I'd recommend you read the book referenced in the conclusion: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4842-4221-6_...

The full PDF is available for download. It's mostly a series of essays, so you can pick and choose and read nonlinearly. It's worth thinking about beyond nihilistic takes.

[gaigalas]

I'll look into it, thanks!

It might sound nihilistic (what does that even mean in this context? anyway), but it's not.

There are lot of good discussions about what good work actually means. I'm dismissing productivity discussions, not the whole set of belief systems.

[greggyb]

> ALL OF IT is meaningless. It's a pointless discussion.

That is a nihilistic take. That it's pointless and everything about the domain (measurement of productivity) is meaningless.

"Productivity" is no more made up of a concept than "good work". The fact that many attempts to measure it are quite dumb (e.g., the idea of using LOC as a metric) does not mean the whole idea is not worth considering or discussing.