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I've looked at people's commit history at work and been astonished to see maybe 12 or so commits in the last year. They are maybe 4th or 5th year tenure with th

I've looked at people's commit history at work and been astonished to see maybe 12 or so commits in the last year. They are maybe 4th or 5th year tenure with the company, but I guarantee pulling more than 200K. Think about that...

adtiustErn 9y ago
Are those 12 or so commits making or saving your company more than $200K per year? Or is it fair to say your highly paid colleagues are dead weight? I believe I am dead weight at my company.
- ferentchak 9y ago
  I am sure you are important to make one of your superiors look like she has a large and important team. You can take pride in that at least!
steven777400 9y ago
Another thing to look at is the person's overall role. Are they an IC? Or do they have other tasks? I have many fewer commits these days than I did a few years ago. Is that because I've become lazy? Maybe, but that's not the whole explanation. The whole explanation includes job duties that now involve managing a team, performing analysis and leadership functions for several business areas, setting agency standards, and so on. None of those tasks appear as commits in the version control system but still are assigned tasks that take up time. When I am working on code I often still don't have the commit. A team member may come to me, "I have a question, I'm stuck on this part..." Then together we will investigate and discover a way forward. I'll then leave it to them to complete and commit it. Their name is the only name on the commit, but did I add any value? I hope so!
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  This is a very good point. At my last company, my title was Staff Software Engineer. However, because of my seniority, by design, I was expected to spend only about 20% of the time actually producing code. The rest of the time was expected to be mentoring others, doing code and design reviews, writing documentation, collaborating with other departments, etc. The end result was that the more responsibility I had, the less code I wrote.

adtiustErn 9y ago

Are those 12 or so commits making or saving your company more than $200K per year? Or is it fair to say your highly paid colleagues are dead weight? I believe I am dead weight at my company.

ferentchak 9y ago
I am sure you are important to make one of your superiors look like she has a large and important team. You can take pride in that at least!

steven777400 9y ago

Another thing to look at is the person's overall role. Are they an IC? Or do they have other tasks? I have many fewer commits these days than I did a few years ago. Is that because I've become lazy? Maybe, but that's not the whole explanation. The whole explanation includes job duties that now involve managing a team, performing analysis and leadership functions for several business areas, setting agency standards, and so on. None of those tasks appear as commits in the version control system but still are assigned tasks that take up time. When I am working on code I often still don't have the commit. A team member may come to me, "I have a question, I'm stuck on this part..." Then together we will investigate and discover a way forward. I'll then leave it to them to complete and commit it. Their name is the only name on the commit, but did I add any value? I hope so!

HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
This is a very good point. At my last company, my title was Staff Software Engineer. However, because of my seniority, by design, I was expected to spend only about 20% of the time actually producing code. The rest of the time was expected to be mentoring others, doing code and design reviews, writing documentation, collaborating with other departments, etc. The end result was that the more responsibility I had, the less code I wrote.