Ask HN: How do you assess developer productivity? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you assess developer productivity?

#31

Post by jf22 » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

mathematically wrote: post #23

bendmorris wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any large tech company has teams dedicated to improving developer productivity. So how do you assess the quality of those teams' work, or that they're worth the investment, or help them prioritize projects? Just don't bother?

Do you have an example of something these teams have developed that has actually made software engineers more productive?

Typescript

Re: Ask HN: How do you assess developer productivity?

#32

Post by mathematically » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 11:52 PM UTC

jf22 wrote: post #31

mathematically wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of something these teams have developed that has actually made software engineers more productive?

Typescript

Good example. TypeScript is a great language.

Re: Ask HN: How do you assess developer productivity?

#33

Post by foopod » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

Most methods are poor. PRs and commits can easily be gamed and generally the best developers are the ones with succinct small changes that deliver high value.

Two ways I have found to measure a developer's productivity are...

1. Based on the feedback of their peers. It helps to know the team members and the team's dynamics though.

2. Based on the $$$ the team bring in. Depending on how the team operate this could be far from their control though, a lot of decisions about the product will be out of the developer's hands.