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There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

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Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#131

Post by jchw »

robertlagrant wrote: post #125
jchw wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it obvious? Hiring people who are actually competent is hard. It's not just me, major corporations have found the same issue. I do believe that you can use basic tests to determine whether someone has more technical competence than some random guy off the street, but it only works up to a point. If you try to test deeper and deeper knowledge, you might create a mirage where someone who isn't very competent appe…

Sorry, that's a bit of a wall of text. I think the most salient thing to the topic I can pick out, without creating a corresponding wall of my own, is this: > there was a time when I didn't agree with a hire and was proven horrifically wrong very soon after Based on what? Did they turn out to be unproductive, but in a good way? What was that way?

I mean, not much to say. They turned out to be productive, just fine. They had no problems grasping the codebase and what they didn't know they were able to learn. I had to admit to them that I didn't vouch for them during the interview process and was simply incorrect.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#132

Post by deepsun »

bovermyer wrote: post #130
deepsun wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is a bad measure of usefulness, but it's better than any other working measure.

Fascinating. I disagree completely, of course. I imagine our backgrounds are wildly different.

Yes, seems like it. I grew up in USSR, and now appreciate capitalism a lot.

Same thing with democracy by the way: yes it's a bad and stupid system, but I've seen the alternative. Many people expect democracy to make ideal and fair decisions, while I see it as just a protection against the most egregious and blatant violations. E.g. the US has "Deficient democracy" rating (only two parties), but it's still infinitely better than any dictatorship.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#133

Post by bruce511 »

n4r9 wrote: post #81
bruce511 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy Customers. All other measures are a proxy for happy customers. Actually, happy customers is also a proxy (the real measure is profits) but measuring profits directly (in the short term) can lead to decisions that have adverse long term effects. It's too easy to increase profits in the short term by avoiding long-term expenses. So, if you're in the business of software, the goal is happy customers. (And I use th…

Arguably the business is aiming for Paying Customers, not necessarily Happy ones :)

I chose happy for a reason :)

So the business is chasing profits. In the short term that means customers paying money - any will do (happy or unhappy).

But in the long term, happy is the key. Happy customers are the single biggest marketing tool you have. Happy customers promote and recommend you. Unhappy customers do the opposite (and are more effective at doing so.)

So, if the metric stops at Customers then you are greatly missing the long-term value. Since a good business is planning for the long term, not just right now, Happy customers I the correct metric.

Remember, you ultimately get what you measure (no more).

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#134

Post by bruce511 »

virgilp wrote: post #106
bruce511 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy Customers. All other measures are a proxy for happy customers. Actually, happy customers is also a proxy (the real measure is profits) but measuring profits directly (in the short term) can lead to decisions that have adverse long term effects. It's too easy to increase profits in the short term by avoiding long-term expenses. So, if you're in the business of software, the goal is happy customers. (And I use th…

When a measure becomes the objective, it ceases to be a good measure. Even if you could perfectly measure customer happiness (very hard, as you note) - it's relatively easy to make customers happy by giving them more value than what they pay for. Sure, that may cost your business more money than what it makes with said customers, but hey, who cares, "profit" was not the metric... (and as you note, if you make "profit…

>> When a measure becomes the objective, it ceases to be a good measure.

Yes and no in this case. Yes, you can naked customers happier with more value, more overhead (ie more support staff and do on.)

Yes, in the short term this might reduce profit. If you go too far down this road you might go bankrupt. No measure works if you dont use the "can we afford it" metric.

But nothing turbo-charges profits (in the short, and more importantly, long term) than happy customers. Ultimately they pay more, theny pay more often, they encourage others to pay.

If you optimize for happy customers, and stay solvent, you have the foundation for a solid long-term business.

I will add that starting with Happy Users (who get stuff for free) and turning them into Happy Customers later is really really hard. Simply giving the thing away (or charging so little it amounts to the same thing) is not what I'm suggesting. You can start with a lower price, yes, but regular price hikes are part of yhe process until uou find your natural price level.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#135

Post by WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW »

johnfn wrote: post #73
WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't seem to struggle, as others claim to, in measuring productivity. Because you are measuring at a very broad and basic level. Steve is more productive than Susan. Great. How much more productive? Can you turn it into a number? Can you still do it consistently when Steve and Susan are in different teams in different parts of the organisation trying to achieve different goals? I've done DB upgrades that to…

> Great. How much more productive? Can you turn it into a number? This is moving goalposts. OP's argument was "There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity", not "You Can't Convert Software Productivity into a Floating Point Number With 3 Decimals of Accuracy."

> This is moving goalposts.

Then I shall move the goalposts. Can you address my shifted goalpost?

I personally did not interpret the author as literally meaning there is no such thing as software productivity but I agree the way he wrote it was confusing and could be interpreted that way.

Even in his toy example he clearly stated Peter did a better job than Frank.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#136

Post by WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW »

theamk wrote: post #62
WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't seem to struggle, as others claim to, in measuring productivity. Because you are measuring at a very broad and basic level. Steve is more productive than Susan. Great. How much more productive? Can you turn it into a number? Can you still do it consistently when Steve and Susan are in different teams in different parts of the organisation trying to achieve different goals? I've done DB upgrades that to…

I don't think anyone can get numbers, but partial ordering is much easier. If Steve and Susan are in different part of organization, the answer is "cannot compare". If they are doing different job, the answer is the same. But every once in a while there is a scenarios when you can compare people easily. There has a weekly rotation to be an support person for other team. During his week, John always answers questions…

> I don't think anyone can get numbers, but partial ordering is much easier.

Agreed.

> If Steve and Susan are in different part of organization, the answer is "cannot compare". If they are doing different job, the answer is the same.

These are the situations where we would get the most value from the metrics though.

The team level already has an Engineering Manager or Tech Lead who can directly deal with team level problems.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#137

Post by hoppp »

johnfn wrote: post #32
n_ary wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it kind of massages our ego, like yes, they can measure other sorts of productivity, but not ours, oh no, we're too complex and intelligent, there's no way to measure the deep sorts of work that we do! Which, yes, OK, we're not exactly bricklayers, but surely, if you had to, you could do better. Productivity is not a cut-n-dry stat for any kind of knowledge work. For an admin, we could say they were more productive…

> To take your envy(I sense it on the quoted remark) to another place, think about how you go about measuring productivity of a CEO, PO, PM, Scrum Master, Agilist/Agile-Specialist etc? I have no envy; I'm a software engineer as well. I just don't seem to struggle, as others claim to, in measuring productivity. I find it fairly straightforward to see that some people are more productive than others, at least in my wor…

There is a difference between observing productivity and measuring it. If you measure it must be quantized into units which is hard, but you can observe it as is and come to a good conclusion too, without measurement.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#138

Post by irjustin »

fcantournet wrote: post #93
irjustin wrote: post #30

I realized why this post rubs me the wrong way. It complains, but doesn't offer a solution. It simply criticizes and says "all engineers cannot and thusly should not be measured". The ironic thing is, the blog post is implicitly measuring by not explicitly measuring. The measurement is the bug ticket itself and whatever value attached to it. But to this end, I generally agree. There are qualitative and quantitative m…

Why do you need to evaluate people constantly and pit them against each other ? Why not give a raise to everyone and see what happens ? It's how we sent rockets to the moon, it seemed to work ok.

> It's how we sent rockets to the moon, it seemed to work ok.

There are so many problems rooted in this statement. Government program, presidential mandate (i.e. unlimited budget), no competition.

SpaceX is clearly better than NASA except maybe they don't push hard enough nor evaluate their engineers so you have a nice stable job if you do nothing.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#139

Post by lanstin »

musicale wrote: post #38
deepsun wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is the measure of usefulness. By the way, why suddenly the money=bad sentiment is so popular? I thought USSR example loudly showed us what happens when people think that money is evil.

When companies focus on profit at the expense of all other goals, the result is typically disadvantageous to customers, employees, and society at large. See also: crapification; financialization; parasitic private equity I can't speak for HN, but I imagine some readers are more interested in the benefits of cool technology beyond putting more money in the pockets of investors and management.

That works out ok as long as they are one of a large numbers of producers, competing equally, without monopoly power or excessive physical power, for a large number of consumers free to Ursula their own best interest; a certain amount of information symmetry is also a necessary axiom.

If instead you have a small number of monopolies with legislative capture, then you need them to be virtuous.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#140

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bruce511 wrote: post #21
strulovich wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but then what is a way to do it? The text gives an example to the core problem, and to argue differently requires thinking around it. In practice. I’ve seen many attempts at measuring productivity, but once you dig into them, you see they are just abstraction mechanisms above something that is similar to lines of code. I have yet to see an idea that sidesteps the core issue described in this post. Also, it applie…

Happy Customers. All other measures are a proxy for happy customers. Actually, happy customers is also a proxy (the real measure is profits) but measuring profits directly (in the short term) can lead to decisions that have adverse long term effects. It's too easy to increase profits in the short term by avoiding long-term expenses. So, if you're in the business of software, the goal is happy customers. (And I use th…

While customer satisfaction is a better (albeit murky) metric, value generated / profit is a better one ultimately. Of course, measuring developer productivity is a means to that end; how much did or will it cost to reach this value generated?

Anyway there's this adage that once a metric (like productivity) becomes a target it ceases to be a useful metric. But this doesn't seem to apply for value / revenue much, so I suppose it's good to keep an eye on this vague productivity metric.

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