I've seen many similar instances myself; and unfortunately many companies still don't understand that metrics-driven development tends to result in ignoring all the other important things that can't be measured as easily.
As the old saying goes: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts."
The Worst Programmer I Know (2023) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452649 - March 2025 (370 comments)
The worst programmer I know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37361947 - Sept 2023 (628 comments)
I've seen many similar instances myself; and unfortunately many companies still don't understand that metrics-driven development tends to result in ignoring all the other important things that can't be measured as easily.
As the old saying goes: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts."
I’ve seen this urge the measure engineers with some metric.
My question is always: then what are we paying the line managers to do? Supervising (which includes evaluating) people is the main job.
Job happiness could be a great metric