It's important to ask the right question, to get the right answer. One thing to wonder is if it's at all important to measure how much gets done, 'per engineer

It's important to ask the right question, to get the right answer. One thing to wonder is if it's at all important to measure how much gets done, 'per engineer'. How can you possibly measure that and why bother? One can be very productive, at doing something nobody will ever use. Another can be 50% as productive, doing something that'll be used by billions of people. One can be miserable and productive, another can be happy and 50% as productive. These things matter - individual productivity in isolation, not so much. By narrowing your question down to single individual performance, you've eliminated the possibility of getting a meaningful answer, other than 'revise your question'.