I don't have an attribution for this quote, so if someone knows it please share... If you want an opinion let's go with mine. Otherwise let's look at t

I don't have an attribution for this quote, so if someone knows it please share... If you want an opinion let's go with mine. Otherwise let's look at the data. It's true that many quantitative metrics can incentivize people in the wrong way. There's a funny story about a city trying to get rid of rats that incentivizes people to hunt rats and turn in the tails... but the people start farming the rats in order to get the reward instead while the project leaders pat each others' backs. However as an engineering leader you should not discount the value of qualitative metrics or metrics altogether. I try to only make a decision "from the gut" when there is no other choice and decision must be made. Data is key. How do you know how well your code review culture is thriving if you do not see, across the entire team, metrics reporting the number of open pull requests, how long they are staying open on average, how many comments they're getting, etc? How do you know if one of your engineers is struggling if you're not watching what gets checked in, what code is being rewritten frequently, etc? How do you gain leverage for your team to management if their are no facts, metrics, to back you your arguments? Just a reminder that you should use metrics. Maybe avoid using them as reward mechanisms and use them as leverage instead. I don't work for GitPrime but you should definitely check out what they're up to. https://try.gitprime.com/data-driven-engineering-metrics/ https://try.gitprime.com/data-driven-engineering-metrics/