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mulander | 4 years ago

> had fewer commits and SLOC compared to my teammates

Hope this makes you feel slightly better: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

It is impossible to measure someones productivity using metrics like commit counts and SLOC. There are times where I don't commit for weeks and provide actual business value by solving direct client issues without even a ticket being present.

At one time at my second IT job, I had a manager reprimand me (yelling over the phone) that I was away from my desk. I was remotely supporting a bank fixing consortium credit contracts (substantial amounts) after a migration. I was told to stop doing that. So, I told the support tech that my 1-up blocked this. He told the people at the bank; this went up the chain at the bank to the main accountants which resulted in a nasty call from the client to the skip manager of my manager. He called me back and asked me to resume what I did almost crying on the phone. Later that year I was selected employee of the year mostly because of that client constantly sending positive feedback on my help.

discuss

AlexCoventry|4 years ago

What do you think the reprimanding manager's motivation was? The possibility that you were doing work he wouldn't get credit for?

mulander|4 years ago

He assumed I was not working or doing work for a different manager (they implemented matrix management and he was at HQ 70 km away from the town I worked at). I made a judgement call as that migration was a $20 mln project. That corporation had time budgeting. I was supposed to account in a production tracking system every task I did in 15 minute granularity. I have a ton of crazy stories like that out of that place.

In essence, the guy was a micromanager with trust issues. They later replaced him, with someone that was actually worse.

northern-lights|4 years ago

Unfortunately at Amazon, that is the norm. When the review time comes, 90% of the orgs will use the no. of Code Reviews raised and no. of commits pushed as the first line metric. Impact, customer focus and everything else is secondary.