Worst Software Metrics
At a previous job of mine, they implemented a &quot;personal improvement plan&quot; for employees who were below management&#x27;s &quot;desired productivity&quot;. There was no warning, no heads up that they would be measuring our GitHub accounts, and it had absolutely no context of what each person had been working on. These reviews came after a 360 peer review, and absolutely blindsided the team. Several of my coworkers left early for the day and didn&#x27;t come in for the rest of the week. I got calls all day from various people asking what happened in my 1:1, what was said, etc...<p>I wish I could show management how negatively and immediately that move affected the culture &amp; mood of engineering at that company. It was an overnight change, and going forward it basically killed all trust in management. I stayed around for a little bit longer, but I should have quit the second they started those measurements.<p>It absolutely murdered the confidence of our junior devs. Of the senior engineers who were put on it, none of them really had any idea what they were doing wrong or how to improve, as no feedback was given about any of that, just that they weren&#x27;t enough. Some of our seniors had 15+ years of experience in software and were industry experts, but it didn&#x27;t matter: They hadn&#x27;t been hitting the number of commits and pull requests and tickets per week that management insisted on.<p>When management was confronted about it, they admitted that code metrics aren&#x27;t a good measurement of productivity, but then insisted that they &quot;needed something&quot;.<p>It turns out, they only used code metrics as a bludgeon to get rid of the employees they wanted gone, and since then that&#x27;s all I&#x27;ve been able to see code metrics as. They&#x27;re a battering weapon used to give HR a performance reason to justify firing you.