The problem with productivity metrics

Leaders keep measuring productivity because it's an easy number, but the metric only captures output, not the value delivered. The article opens with a story of a director who forced mandatory Saturdays and judged success by the number of cars in the parking lot, a clear illustration of how a narrow metric creates perverse incentives and resentment among engineers.

The obsession with productivity dates back 250 years to an era of machines and farms where output per hour was the right yardstick. Today knowledge work produces ideas, not widgets, and output numbers ignore quality. The piece cites Dan Pink's anecdote of writing two mediocre books in the time it takes to write one great one - double the output, but half the impact - to show why the old formula fails for creative work.

When teams are judged on raw output, they chase cheap wins: fixing trivial bugs, shipping lightweight features, or working longer hours. Those tactics may improve velocity on paper but erode morale, increase burnout, and dilute real customer value. The article points out that developers who focus on quantity over significance end up delivering work that customers rarely notice, while the pressure to ship quickly discourages ambitious, high-impact projects.

A healthier approach is to frame goals as outcomes instead of tasks. Leaders should ask for a 10-point performance improvement rather than ten load balancers, or a 5% traffic lift instead of five blog posts. By defining leading indicators-milestones, feedback loops, employee well-being metrics-teams can see early signals of progress, iterate, and keep the focus on what truly matters to customers and the business.

The author urges technical leaders to retire output-centric metrics now, replace them with outcome-based measures, and embed continuous improvement signals into daily work. The shift not only aligns effort with real results but also restores creativity, reduces stress, and builds a culture where teams own the impact they create.