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@Bartweiss thanks for the feedback. The thing about “gaming the system”, is that it presumes an adversarial relationship between engineers and non-engineers. Th

• Bartweiss 10y ago
  Thanks, that was a great quick read. Adversarial work does seem like it's largely a sign of communication breakdown. I think 'gaming' isn't always as adversarial as it seems, though. I was considering it in terms of Goodhart's Law, where even with good intentions, representative metrics become less representative as you organize around them. The "active days" entry in your link seems like an example; if everyone pushes most days for the sake of pushing, then active days isn't feedback on programmer skill. Of course, your link touches on that. "Everyone pushes every day" is a great outcome, even if the metric is no longer clear. The common trend is to pick good metrics, then struggle to keep them relevant. I really like the alternative of just setting metrics that will be good after people optimize.
• hulahoof 10y ago
  The other side of this is it is likely if the engineers are optimising for a metric that is important enough to be tied to compensation, the companies' non-engineers are likely to place a high value on that metric too, exacerbating the issue. This is a situation where I feel gaming the system is not an inherently adversarial relationship.