Rethinking developer productivity in the age of AI
For decades, engineering leaders have struggled to measure the productivity of their developers. Metrics such as number of PRs merged, lines of code changed, hours worked, and tickets closed were always flawed. They incentivized the wrong behaviors and ignored code quality and best practices. Ultimately, they were the perfect formula to make Goodhart's Law a reality. Measures became targets, which meant they ceased being good measures.